


Evangelion 3.14159 You Can (not) Have The Pie.

by Shock_Cooling



Category: Edge of Darkness (TV 1985), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), Rebuild of Evangelion | Evangelion: New Theatrical Edition
Genre: Channeling, Drug Use, F/M, Little Instrumentalities all over the place, Reckless use of firearms, Underage Drug Use, a rather odd way of conducting an investigation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:01:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23040628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shock_Cooling/pseuds/Shock_Cooling
Summary: NERV is a massive corrupt international defense organization and above NERV is SEELE. The Director of the Defense Intellegence Agency of the United States has finally decided that he has had enough of SEELE's shenanigans and launches an investigation.The Director decides that the most effective way to take down SEELE is by infiltrating a pair of conferences in Las Vegas with his chief agent inside of NERV. In order to distract those he is investigating. He and his entourage play the part of utter fools. Reenacting an old movie about the drug culture.Nothing this absurd could possibly be a threat to the mighty SEELE, right?
Relationships: Ikari Shinji & Makinami Mari Illustrious
Kudos: 1





	1. We can't stop here.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternate work title. The Banshee and the Buffalo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "So how does it fly?" 
> 
> "Like a bat." 
> 
> An exchange between a USAF F22 maintainer and a Royal Australian Air Force F22 transfer pilot.

We were just outside of Barstow when the drugs began to take hold. 

I swear, we were. Although, I wasn't driving, that would have been reckless. 

I was sitting in the passenger seat. Wearing an Acapulco shirt and cargo shorts. The music was different, I had to resist this incredible compulsion to sing along with the song blaring out of the car radio. I believe I said. "Can we stop? I need to check the trunk." 

"Is the sky full of huge bats yet?" Asked Director Jedburgh. 

"Indeed it is. I still don't understand exactly why we're doing this. I mean, we're going to take down a huge criminal conspiracy by reenacting Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?" 

"Yeah well, Mari. As risky as this is this is significantly less risk and resource expenditure than what Gendo wants. We all flow according to the whim of the Great Magnet and the Great Magnet wants us to do this. The risk is still there and I still feel pretty bad about this. Your fourteen year old brain is probably going to be permanently fried by this experience." 

We stopped the car, I opened the trunk. 

"Four bags of grass, 32 pellets of mescaline, six sheets of high powered blotter acid. A salt shaker 3/4 full of cocaine. 90 tabs of Ecstasy. Two ounces of powdered DMT. 140 grams of Mushrooms. A whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers and laughers. A variety of recording devices which uploaded to a secure terminal at DIA headquarters. No alcohol though, Jedburgh had been adamant about that. No tequila, beer or even rum. Alcohol and psychedelics do not play well with each other. A box of medical grade latex gloves, first aid kit. Various means of narcotics application and a pint of ether." 

In terms of armaments. We decided to take a page from No Country For Old Men, a Remington V3 Tac-13 with a folding brace and suppressor. Darius had his old revolver that he had carried with him on many, many missions. And a matched set of Glock-19 pistols without serial numbers. Would you believe those were legal? At least in Nevada. We didn't even have to go through Darius's CIA connections to get them. 

I got back in the car and Darius started driving again. I thought back to how Darius made sure that everything we were going to do on this trip would be recorded. Everything we were going to say and do had to be recorded and admissible in a court of law. It felt odd considering that we were going to be breaking a whole bunch of laws on this trip. But I was strangely okay with it. The average American commits three felonies a day without even knowing about most of them. Breaking the law in order to save it. Though hopefully we would be employing the Doctor Strange approach of not breaking things too hard. 

I asked. "You know, if we're picking up a hitchhiker out here in the desert... How could a hitchhiker survive out here? I mean, there's no water, no nothing for miles." 

"Aren't you supposed to be talking about the bats swooping and diving on the car?" 

"Oh yeah, right!" 

I reached down and picked up the shotgun, loaded with buckshot. And fired it two times. Then I remembered that the bats were hallucinations. 

"You know that wasn't nearly as fun as it probably looked. So let's get to it? Who is going to be our passenger on this mission of..? We can't stop here." 

"What? You were expecting Spider-Man? Let's give that boy a lift." 

Darius stopped the convertible. 

"Really? We're picking up Shinji Ikari? How did he even get out here?" 

"Hot damn, I've never ridden in a convertible before." 

I remembered that this was a reenactment, turned to him and said. "Well, I suppose you're old enough, well, come on, get in." 

After he got in the backseat, I crawled back there. I wrapped my arms around him and smelled him. No scent of LCL whatsoever. He still smelled damn good though. 

"So, where... Did you come from? How did you wind up out here in the desert?" I asked.

"I was dropped off by someone with my fathers... Company? Operation? I'm not sure what to call it. Either way I got dropped off in this desert on the way to a conference he is putting on. They told me to hitchhike. Said that I couldn't turn up on their flight logs. Do you work with my father? Or NERV?" 

"No not really, no. But I'm glad you brought him up. Before we go any further we should probably all know each other's names? I'm Mari, the guy behind the wheel is Darius Jedburgh. He's... Well... He's with the American government and I'm with the... Ah let's just say a bunch of other governments allied with the American government. Now, for the next few... Well, I don't know how long this is going to take. Either way, we will be reenacting a magnificent piece of American cinema and you can either chose to play along. Or not, we can just stop the car anytime and drop you by the side of this lonely road. Having said that... If you stay on with us... This is a very ominous assignment. With overtones of extreme personal danger." 

"You see this, this is going to be a mission right into the heart of the human psyche. Hunter Thompson's trip was intended as a headstone dedicated to the end of the 60s. Ha, that's what they thought. It was, in practice as opposed to theory. A call for his people to fight on for all eternity. Even if they fight on in the name of monsters. Shinji? Have you ever heard of a man called Oscar Zeta Acosta?" 

"No." 

"Well he was a beast of a man. A man of... Horrifying hunger. Died in Mexico, probably as a consequence of a massive drug deal that didn't quite pan out. But he did do some good things for the rights of oppressed minorities. Over the next few... Days? We shall be reenacting his and Thompson's gross physical salute to everything right and true with the character of humanity. But this is a mission only for those with true grit. And we are chock full of that! How about you?" 

"Um, what?" 

"Okay, so, 24 hours ago Director Jedburgh and I were in the patio section of the Beverly Heights Hotel. Hiding from the brutish realities of this foul, post second impact world." 

"Perhaps this is the call you've been waiting for, sirs." 

"That was headquarters. I'm in! They wouldn't let me in the British Royal Air Force and the Dutch don't want me either. They said the Royal New Zealand Air Force is going to take me. They've approved my transfer to Colorado Springs. Before I get to learn how to fly F16s though they say that NERV is hosting a conference of their contractors and subcontractors in Vegas. We're going to infiltrate it." 

"Sounds like a lot of trouble. We're going to need to call in a few favors, rent a very fast car with no top. We will need lots of recording devices, Acapulco Shirts. And of course we're going to have to arm ourselves... to the teeth." 

"Well, if a things worth doing its worth doing right. We'd be fools not to ride this strange torpedo to its end." 

"Indeed, we must do it." 

"Getting hold of the car and shirts had been no problem. But the drugs were a wee bit of a challenge. There aren't many labs that still make medical grade blotter acid. And the ether. Sheesh, we bought that from a guy who was as close to a real life version of Mr Burns that I had ever seen. And I admit, we did have a little more trouble at the car rental agency." 

"Miss Makinami, if I can just get your John Hancock here, you will be on your way. You're going to be careful with this, right?" 

"Of course, why else do you think I sprung for extra insurance?" As I threw the car into reverse. 

"Holy smokes, you just backed over a 2 foot concrete abutment and didn't even slow down. What were you doing 45 miles an hour? backwards?" 

"No harm done, I always test the transmission that way. The rear end for stress factors." 

A song started playing in my head, a song lyric to be specific. "But I forgot my pen." 

As we drove off the guy shouted, "you've got my pen!" I shouted back. "I'll bring it back when I'm done with the car! Sorry, but I think I need this." 

"Goddamn freaks!" 

"So, now, here we are. You, me, and the big guy... Hurtling across the desert in this strange torpedo. We need you to flip on your father, Shinji." 

"Flip? Flip how?" 

"We're going to need your help to take down Gendo and we're going after Seele." 

"Sea... Who now?" 

"Seele, evil conspiracy of brain shaped rectangles, or something. I watched those bastards die in some other reality and I'm still not sure exactly what they are supposed to be. Either way, once this is all over we might need you to pilot an Evangelion unit." 

"What's an Evangelion unit?" 

"Ah, okay, we're back that far, that explains the different smell, perfect. An Evangelion, or Eva unit is an enormous cyborg that I'm able to pilot, and so are you. They are terrifying monstrosities made out of some kind of fucked up combination of the cloned flesh of Angels and... usually. Cloned flesh from the pilots mother. So, while my friend handles the driving. I'll explain to you what your part is in the biggest and most insane conspiracy in recent world history. I mean, when you get a load of what your father is up to you are going to..." 

"Whoa! Weahough! Wharrgarble!" 

"Oh dear." I said as Jedburgh stopped the car. 

"Medicine!" 

"What was that?" 

"Medicine!" 

"Ah, okay, this man has a weak heart. Angina pectoris, but don't worry. I am a trained... medic and we have effective treatment. Here take this, take this, big whiff sonny boy."

"Ah... And now one for the doctor."

"Eeeeeeeeough. Ah..." 

"Oh, why the hell are we out in the middle of the goddamn desert? Help! We need help! We need..." 

"Honk!" 

Jedburgh leaned back and said. 

"Shinji, you want the truth?" 

"The truth?" 

"We're going to Vegas to arrest your father, we know about his plans and one way or another we're going to stop... Instrumentality? I think that's what he calls it. Either way, once we have him in custody we will call this story... A reconstruction of a deconstruction? Evidence of what would happen if there was just one man in the US government who didn't trust Gendo and sign on with his plan? Either way, we're going to take two utterly insane stories and smash them to create one grand... Whatever this is going to be." 

"I mean, what is going on in this planet when a scum sucker like Gendo can get away with... I don't even know where to begin." 

Shinji had missed his cue to jump.

Jedburgh moved back into a proper driving position, restarted the engine and we continued on. 

"I'm glad you signed on with us kid." Said Jedburgh. 

"Oh I'm not signed on yet. We're just driving through a desert that would roast my pale skin into a crispy vulture meal inside of 20 minutes." 

"So... You don't want to come with us or you do or...?" I asked. 

"What am I going to get out of this trip? Because I could keep playing the hitchhiker and jump out. Or I could..." 

"Play the role of Oscar Zeta Acosta? Are you sure you're up to that? Shinji?" Asked Jedburgh. 

"I could try playing the Samoan Lawyer." Replied Shinji. 

"Ah, so you have seen this movie before. Do you think you're up to it? Do you think any version of Shinji Ikari is up to the task of playing a guy like Acosta? Even Michael Bay's interpretation of your character might not be up to that task." I said. 

"Michael... Who now?" 

"Well, you are in for quite a treat then Mr Ikari. You were wondering what an Evangelion unit is?" 

I got my phone out. I kept a copy of the trailer on it. 

"Now that's what I'm talking about." 

Shinji went silent as he tried to make heads or tails of what he had just seen. I continued. 

"I know who and what you are right now, Shinji. You're a sweet kid. But we need a real, fucking, MAN! We, and when I say we I mean all of humanity. We need you to become something like that version of you. Someone who will face down giant monsters and just go. 'Oo rah'. This... Trip? Is an admittedly desperate and insane attempt at bringing this new reality about for you by channeling the spirit of the Brown Buffalo himself through your very veins. My guardian is a good man, but he has never been able to understand the essential decency of Japanese culture. He's racially handicapped." 

"Excuse me!" Said Shinji and Jedburgh. 

"Come on, Darius, bubby, you gotta see that you're not even partly Japanese, right?" 

"And you are? I believe you wanted to stay in Japan, quote, just long enough to learn the language?" 

"So what? I can still speak the language of insecure young boys enough to give them exactly what they want even if I'm blitzed out of my mind on psychedelics." 

"Aren't you a little young to be on drugs?" Asked Shinji. 

"We're in the state of California, heading to Nevada. What I'm on right now is currently legal in both states, ah boo yah!" 

"Not for fourteen year olds!" Shinji and Jedburgh said in perfect unison. 

"Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound. Oh, now what do we have here? I think it's my half of the sunshine acid! Oh come on Shinji, don't look at me like that. If you're going to take the role of Doctor Gonzo from a guy like Darius Jedburgh here you gotta be willing to try some drugs yourself at some point. That is, if you really want to try to be my wingman..." 

I ate the acid and asked. 

"So, how long until we get to the hotel?" 

"Too long, so... are you ready to check into a hotel under your own name, a hotel filled with Nerv employees who might decide to kill you if they find out what we're up to. In order to protect a mission critical witness from his own father... With a head full of acid?" 

"Oh, like you're any..." 

"I'm not eating that, and you can't make me. Put down the pliers, Mari." 

"Yeah that's, probably for the best that one of us be... sober." 

"Don't worry, we will both be walking with the king soon enough. But it must be walking. I'm not driving with a head full of acid. Do I have to tell you about when I started working for the CIA again?" Asked Jedburgh. 

"Okay kid, listen good and listen tight, because he's only going to say this once." I said. 

"Now I'm only going to say this once." 

"The year was 1955!" 

"The year was 1955 and I had just started working as an intern at the CIA. At the time the agency was experimenting with LSD and I do mean experimenting. We were using it to prank each other and over the course of that first year I was dosed ten times without my knowledge. And even though we were dosed we were still expected to do our jobs and we did so with aplomb. After something like that, I'm the hulk, kiddo." 

"Yeah. So that's when he proved he could function while on all the drugs. But I say that was a long time ago and they should have sent someone younger and fitter who can keep up with us." 

Jedburgh replied, "don't think I can keep up? Fine. Let's see what this old battleship can do." 

He stomped on the gas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://youtu.be/FckkZihQUaU


	2. She's got style, she's got grace.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thompson walked into the Mint Casino, saw a bunch of lizards and freaked out. Then he saw Lacerda and freaked out a little more. 
> 
> Mari does her best to reenact this scene at the Luxor Casino. But the realities of what she is attempting soon establish this to be patently impossible.

"I need this? Right?" 

"I'll remember your face." 

I knew a perfect, shot for shot reenactment was impossible. The music was different, I'm pretty sure The Mint Hotel and Casino was knocked down a long time ago and I wasn't Hunter S Thompson. That man had years of psychedelic experience. A body burnt at both ends for longer than I've been alive. This was my first day on this stuff and I was burning fast. Darius had prepared me as well as he could but there comes a time when you just have to jump in. 

As I walked across the floor of the casino though I realized the genius in this. This sequence took on a completely different tone when it was a fourteen year old girl strutting onto the floor of a casino as opposed to some bald white guy stumbling around, freaking out on acid. I couldn't help but dance to the song as I walked through the casino. 

"The kind you'd like to flaunt and take to dinner! Whoo!" 

"Mari, calm down, you're going to draw attention." Said Jedburgh. 

Right, one moment! Okay, name, rank and affiliation, nothing else. Ignore these terrible hallucinations, pretend it's not happening. 

"Hello! My name? Is... Mari Makinami. Nerv manufacturers conference. Pilot! Or, pilot cadet. Royal New Zealand Air Force. Total coverage? I have my legal guardian and my... Wingman... with me and I know that my wingman is not on that list but he is a boy and I am a girl and so we simply must have a suite!" 

"Okay, so... What's happening here? What's the score?" 

"Your suite isn't ready yet. We will page you when it is. We got the changes in reservation a little while ago. Somebody is looking for you." 

"Ha! Jesus! No we haven't done anything yet!" 

"I'm sorry, my granddaughter is a little... Jumpy. Okay, we will be waiting for your page, over here." 

Waiting in a lounge adjacent to the casino I looked around and saw hundreds of Nerv employees. Technicians, industrialists, engineers. One last party before Unit 01 came online. The resources poured into NERV made the budget for the F22 program look like chicken feed. That beast strained the finances of the USAF. This program strained the finances of every remaining world government. Even after all this time I still had trouble wrapping my mind around that. 

"Why was I so afraid?" I wondered, I was supposed to be at this conference. 

We all were. 

Then I noticed that there was blood sloshing around on the floor, it dawned on me that I was in a fucking reptile zoo. 

I giggled. 

Someone was giving alcohol to these things. 

"I'm supposed to be here too." 

I looked over and saw Shinji. Reassuringly, he was not a lizard. Somehow maintaining his schoolboy charm. I sang softly to him, "Amore Scusami! I could never bear to see your heart break. To see your heart break. Over me..." 

He took my hand. I returned the gesture and started rubbing his shoulder gently. I had a considerable desire to start kissing his fingers when I remembered that we were still in a fucking reptile zoo. 

"Okay, we're going to go a little off script. But hopefully only a little. But we're going to have to. Sorry Shinji, this is my first time doing this and I don't think..." 

"Attention, Makinami, your room is ready." 

Darius swept out of nowhere and grabbed my right arm, Shinji my left. "Okay, come on, let's get to the room." Darius said. 

"Yes that sounds like a capital idea chaps! Room-ward Ho!' I thought I said but according to the recording I sounded more like, "hlab Jlab glabba gee hoot for when a doh ningi wu!" as I was was guided to our room. 

"Okay, this, this is a little better. But the carpets are definitely, yeah... Okay just gotta maintain..." 

We got in an elevator.

"Maintain." 

We went down a hallway.

"Maintain." 

I was laid out on a bed. 

"Maintain." 

I looked up to see an army of Eva units walking out of the ceiling as the script began to deviate ever so slightly. 

"Shinji, I know you're wondering where we got the tape of that cartoon version of you that Mari showed you? It came from a modified version of this." 

Jedburgh began hooking up pieces of equipment to Mari.

"It's a dream recording device, but the equipment is a bit... Esoteric and unpredictable. Either way... Ah, it's working." 

The first episode of neon genesis Evangelion began playing on one of the TVs in the room. Along with footage from the Vietnam war on another screen and some kind of cartoon on the third. 

While I tried to calm down despite the fact that I was in a catatonic state from the rapid and massive infusion of various drugs directly into a fourteen year old human brain. Shinji and Jedburgh watched the first episode. 

Once it was over Darius shut off the equipment and brought me back to something like consciousness. 

"Main...

And I didn't finish the word because I was being given water, lots of it. By Shinji. 

I gave him a thumbs up. Jedburgh said, "we're going back on script. Now remember, please. Try not to say anything. If he asks or says anything to you just say. "You're not Portuguese." 

A knock came on the door. 

Darius grabbed his revolver and went to the door. 

Gendo was on the other side. 

Darius let him in. 

"Father?!" 

"You're not Portuguese!" I shouted. 

Gendo looked at the televisions for just a moment. They were all off. 

"What do you think you're doing here?" Asked Gendo. 

"Just reenacting a movie, having a little fun." I said. 

"And you're just going to go along with this drug fueled madness? Shinji?" 

"Yes Father. So far these 'drug addled lunatics' have been much more honest with me than you have been." 

Gendo turned around and saw Jedburgh was still holding his revolver. 

"I'll leave you three here to do... Whatever it is you're going to do. But if you are attending this conference you are doing so as pilots. I brought plug suits for both of you. I expect you both to wear them at the conference and explain to the attendees exactly nothing about what we do. I don't know what it is you three idiots are planning. But it's not going to work." 

I threw up a bunch of hex finger signs as Gendo left. 

"I'm not wearing a plug suit in front of those dirty old men. If I have to walk the floor of the conference I shall do so in an RNZAF cadet uniform." 

"Sounds good." Replied Jedburgh. 

"Now, leave us. I wish to be alone with Shinji! Go gamble or something. Hang out with your old spook friends. I must explain things to young mr Ikari here." 

"Alright, phones right there if you need help. And..." 

Jedburgh put the silenced shotgun on the table. 

"There's also this. Still think it's a good idea to use guns with a head full of acid though?" 

"Yeah, no, no you can lock that up if you like." 

Jedburgh left. 

"How much did he show you, how long was it on?" 

"22 Minutes." 

"Ah, good, you lucky sod." 

I balled up in the fetal position. 

"I had to watch that thing till its end, and then it ended again, and again, and again, and again until I showed up? I don't fit into this universe, I don't fit into that universe. I mean, in that universe I'm a calm, rational, berserker? What the hell kind of a character is that supposed to be? And I haven't even gotten to the worst part. I've seen Seele, I've seen them die, I think. But I still don't know what the actual end looks like but I've seen so many variations that I'm done watching. I want this over and I think I'm willing to do anything to do it including dosing myself with..." 

"Oh no..." 

"Acids changing gears on me." 

"I've got to be able to trust you, Shinji. It's as simple as that. But if I'm about to go on a hellish introspective nightmare I'm going to have to be able to..." 

Something gone into more detail in the book than in the movie. Something they probably should have mentioned in the movie. Acosta took an entire sheet of LSD and tried to electrocute himself in a bathtub to the tune of White Rabbit. Why did he do this? In the movie he doesn't say. In the book he said it was because he needed 'to get higher.' Already completely blitzed out of his gourd on every single drug known to civilized man since 1544 AD and he needed to get higher? He didn't care if it killed him. Just drop the toaster into the bathtub when White Rabbit peaks. That first night in that hotel room with Shinji I was probably higher than anyone is ever supposed to go. I can't hope to describe the intensity of the first part. It was simply... Illustrious. The words echoed in my head. "God didn't do that, you did." 

Those words were some kind of profound knowledge that had to be inscribed on my mind. Something I would never forget. If I could remember anything it would be that there is God and there is man. And both make mistakes. After hearing that... Wisdom, reality as I comprehended it became incomprehensible. 

The rest of that night I skimmed across the surface of reality. 

Various realities. 

For every single person lives in their own separate reality. In some cases, realities of those who were attending the conference became transparent to me. In other cases it was just wild nonsense. Some things I saw I was probably supposed to see and Shinji undeniably saw some things that he was meant to see. 

No we didn't have sex, the recording devices Jedburgh had scattered around the room showed no record of that. I just held the poor boy like a big stuffed toy and spoke to him. 

He seemed to have lived a life with a minimum amount of love. So I deluged him with this stream of consciousness rambling about every form of love you could ever imagine excepting the sexual variety. I wanted to though, I really wanted to. I sincerely desired to offer up my precious virginity to this boy. I kept reminding myself. He was still a boy, not a man and we were all going to need him to be a man. And not by any shortcuts. I think my training, or perhaps some instinct knew that this was not yet the time to go dabbling into that. Most of what I remembered about that night was holding him and touching his face and neck and thanking him over and over again. 

"But seriously, Shinji. I could never bear to see your heart break. But it was never over me." 

Like the foolish child I was I had pushed my brain right up to the edge of the performance envelope. I had gone from zero to the speed of sound faster than the average jet fighter. I couldn't keep up. 

Fortunately I had a very good wingman.


	3. Grapefruit-Drug Interactions.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mari wakes up following her first drug trip. Blind stinking sober and raring to attend the Manufacturers Conference. 
> 
> Mari meets Asuka with Gendo and finds herself going all, "nothing ventured, nothing gained."
> 
> Hunter Thompson faces a river of LCL. A conversation about decriminalization and observations on the endings of very long wars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some fruit juices and fruits can interact with numerous drugs, in many cases causing adverse effects.

I awoke to Darius's smiling face. 

"Good morning, sunshine." He said cheerfully. 

I groaned. "Ugh, feels like I... I don't even know. Last night... words utterly fail me." 

"Yeah, generally speaking when a fourteen year old does drugs for the first time in their life it's usually a painkiller or perhaps a few puffs on low strength weed. You... dove straight off the deep end. Are you combat effective?" 

"I... Think so. It's..." 

I looked over. 

I was under the covers, Shinji was sleeping on top of the bed. 

I tapped his shoulder. 

As he rolled over I noticed the piles of tissues next to the bed.

"What, uh..." 

"He was crying, well, actually you both were. You slept, you woke, you cried, you talked and fell asleep again and at one point I think you tried to quote Shakespeare. Either way, we got a full spread breakfast downstairs, clean clothes in the closet and a conference to attend. I expect you both to be cleaned up and ready to go in... Oh, I'll be generous and give you a half hour. I have your new uniform right here. Cleaned and pressed." 

Jedburgh left the uniform on the bed as he left the room. 

While Shinji went to take a shower I picked up the uniform and held it for a moment. 

The Nerv suppliers conference was a pretty run of the mill operation. Posters, graphs, desks, swag. Seen one corporate conference, you've seen them all. At least that's been my experience. You don't come to these things for the trappings. You come to network. 

No one there seemed to have any idea that the slim Japanese boy in a white shirt was going to be the one driving the monstrosity that they were almost finished building. But they knew who I was. Hours upon hours spent talking to these people about this or that some other detail of Eva construction, manufacture, maintenance, employment. It was exhausting. And completely emptied me of engineering knowledge. Scott Crossfield, legendary test pilot. He stressed the importance of test pilots having an engineering background so informed modifications to aircraft can be made following test flights. I had studied engineering... Somewhat. But this was more mad science than I could keep up with. Especially the biotech aspects. 

By the time I sighted Gendo in the crowd I was done. I couldn't deal with what he doubtless had in store for me. I began my escape. Then I noticed who Gendo was wandering around the conference with and I subconsciously reached for my concealed handgun before I stopped myself. I was told that Gendo usually kept Rei Ayanami fairly close to him. Not this time, this time he had a different Eva pilot by his side. Plug suit and everything. Asuka herself. 

My fast walk was about to burst into a flat out sprint when I crashed into some land whale, his enormous wife and his colossal brother. As I peeled myself off a wall of flesh Gendo and Asuka approached. 

"Leaving so soon?" He said in a creepy tone. 

"Yeah, I... Got a reenactment to get back to." 

"But you're the hit of the conference. Everybody here loves you." 

"Not everyone." I said as I pointed at Asuka. 

She took two steps towards me and smacked my finger out of the air. 

"Let's get one thing straight. If we go into battle, I have command. I'm the one who has actual time in an Eva and I outrank you, Cadet Makinami!" 

Holding my stinging index finger I asked. "And what is your rank? I don't see any badges, pins, stripes, bars, oak leaves, stars, animals or anything else on this sexy little getup of yours." 

It was rather amusing. 

For a whole thirty eight seconds Asuka's face roiled with emotion as she decided what she was going to do to me. 

I saw Shinji. 

Gendo and Asuka didn't. 

He mouthed to me. "Need help?" 

I mouthed back, "bring the car around. Go, I've got this." 

As he left Asuka finally exploded. 

"Who do you think you are?" 

"Mari Illustrious Makinami. That's who I am. And quite frankly, the thought of having you as a commanding officer makes me consider resignation, or if I'm not allowed to, I'll put in for a transfer. I'll probably get blown to kingdom come trying to fight an Angel with an obsolete weapon. But at least I won't suffer the incredibly painful and doubtless humiliating death that I will be destined for under a command like yours." 

I motioned that I was drawing a gun. 

Fun fact abut psychedelics. There is a well documented effect where those on psychedelics are able to influence the moods of those around them. Even people not on psychedelics. An image formed in my minds eye of me killing Asuka, horrifically. I was squatting over her stomach, devouring her entrails. Smiling and laughing as the life faded from her eyes. 

Her eyes. 

My eyes. 

I could feel all the fear I had ever experienced in my life flowing from my eyes into hers. 

I leveled a finger right between Asuka's eyes as I took on the deepest, graveliest voice I could come up with along with a bizarrely intense New Zealand accent and said. 

"Or maybe I'll just save us all the trouble and kill you now?" 

I could taste an unbelievably deep wellspring of fear about to erupt through her body. Drawn from her very deepest possible well. I was probably cheating. After all, some... other me had gone into something called beast mode with something that could be called her... Mother. But I needed to understand her fear as deeply as possible. I was damn sure that she could see what I saw right now. Asuka was almost there. I just needed to give her the final push. 

"Bang!" 

You know, skintight suits really don't leave anything at all to the imagination at all. 

"So, tell me. What is your rank?" 

Asuka breathed raggedly. 

"Sooner you tell me your rank the sooner I stop humiliating you in front of all these people." 

"Captain, I'm a captain... in the Luftwaffe." 

I retracted my finger and let her go. As I walked away Gendo followed me and asked, "where are you going? We need total coverage." 

I reached into a pocket in my uniform and pulled out a small jar of makeup foundation. "There, now you have it. I suggest you go clean up that little mess, Gendo. Your pilot is making your organization look like a bunch of weaklings and pedophiles who like to simultaneously weaponize and sexualized traumatized children." 

🎶"It's not unusual."🎶 

Ah, this is so much better. Total control now. Just two kids in a fire apple red convertible having a night out in Vegas. Good people.

"Let us taste this desert air. Man, you took on the role of Doctor Gonzo like a duck to water." 

"Yeah, well. I'm loosening up, who would have thought it would be fun to party in Las Vegas with a cute girl?" 

"Aw, you think I'm cute?" 

"Yeah, oh here we go. Crab Louie and a pint of muscatel for ten bucks. As your newly designated wingman I advise you to drive over to the Tropicana casino. Guy Lombardo is giving a lecture the blue room." 

"You think I'm going to pay my hard earned dollars to listen to how that guy survived having a nuclear bomb uncorked in his face? Actually that sounds like an interesting idea."

"It's free for Conference attendees." 

That sealed the deal. Lombardo's lecture on his close encounter of the atomic kind was oddly flat though. Afterwards we rolled over to Circus Circus. 

"Ah, ether. Ether is the perfect drug for Las Vegas. Makes you act like the village drunkard in some old Irish novel. Fun fact, the British government tried to wean those old Irish drunkards off of alcohol and onto ether sometime during the 1800s. At the time there was a belief that ether would give you all the effects of being drunk without a hangover. While this was... Theoretically true, regular consumption of gaseous ether has other, rather unpleasant side effects. But the British didn't supply gaseous ether. They supplied liquid ether to the Irish. Which has, among other side effects. The possibility of igniting ones breath when exposed to flame after drinking. What was I saying?" 

"For just ninety nine cents you will appear 200 feet tall above the strip. For ninety nine cents more you can record a message. You can say whatever you want, you will be 200 feet tall!" 

"200 feet tall? Sounds a lot like driving an Eva." Said Shinji. 

The Ether was wearing off, the acid was long gone. But the mescaline was running strong. How the fuck could anyone be expected to withstand this? I should be in a dark, quiet room allowing my consciousness to expand across the universe to the tune of some rocking music not this this miserable Muzak...

"Mari, I think I need to get out of this town." 

"You're safe wording out? We have found the main nerve of Nerv and you want to run?" 

"Mari, it's, it's just too much all at once. You, me, my father, Nerv, Evangelion's, Angels. It's, my head is swimming. Just, let's just go up to the room, call Jedburgh and get out of here." 

"You sure you don't want to stay? I mean, there's two girls fucking a penguin over there." 

"Mari, if I stay in this town one more hour I'm going to bring about instrumentality. I'm not sure how, but I will." 

"Okay, that works for me, well, come on, let's get going." 

As we were heading up to our room I realized the sheer insanity of what we were doing. Thompson said that Vegas isn't a good town for psychedelic drugs, why didn't we listen to him? Extremely menacing vibrations were indeed all around us. Surrounded on all sides by people who, if this mission succeeded. Would all face jail time. At least a trial. 

I had put my faith in Jedburgh. I hoped that while Shinji and I were galavanting across the town drawing attention. He was getting the job done. 

Jedburgh used to work for the CIA. And I trusted this man? Had I completely lost my... Bad question. 

Shinji couldn't unlock the door. 

"Shit! They changed the locks on us already!" 

"Think they searched the room?" I asked. 

Then I noticed, "wait, no, this is the room key. This is for a completely different hotel. Who's key is this?" 

We went in our room. 

There was grapefruit everywhere. 

"What's with all the grapefruit?" Shinji asked. 

"That's how they did it back then. In the course of their bender Acosta and Thompson feasted upon tons of grapefruit. At one point they were quite literally bathing in the stuff." 

"Why?" 

"They didn't say, either in the book or in the movie. Personally I think it has something to do with... Hang on, I got to look something up. Let's see, grapefruit, drug interactions, holy cow! That's a lot of reading. Yeah, um. I don't know. Grapefruit can affect a whole bunch of different drugs a whole bunch of different ways. And considering that they were already taking all the drugs it probably made this trip even more chaotic than I thought it would. Shinji, do you like grapefruit?" 

"No, I really don't like it. I think it tastes awful." 

"So do I, so, with that in mind..." 

I grabbed a few convenient plastic bags, collected the grapefruit and took it to a maid outside. 

"Pardon me, there's been some kind of an accident. My wingman is deathly allergic to grapefruits. I would like these returned from wherever they came." 

They had apparently come from room service. Someone apologized and I thought that was going to be the end of it until I asked Shinji to clarify the key screwup. 

"Oh yeah, this is our key and this is a key to my fathers room." 

"Shinji? Why...? Do you have a key to your fathers room?" 

"Well, I figured we could go over to his room and blast him out of bed with a fire hose." 

He started cutting up a lime. 

"Why am I cutting up a lime?" Shinji asked. 

"Because that's what Acosta did in this scene. Well, grapefruit, not lime. Why do you want to blast your father out of bed with a fire hose, Shinji? 

"Why not? After all he's done. To humanity, to me. I mean... he got ahold of my woman, man!" 

"You mean Asuka? She's... Your woman now?" 

I remembered our little run in in the elevator. 

"Are... Are you." Asuka asked in a trembling voice. 

Shinji turned around and smiled at her. 

Getting a good look at her. His smile grew to absurd proportions. Knowing that in some other reality... He hoped, he prayed that she was going to say. "Stupid Shinji, I'm the greatest Eva pilot in the world." And one way or another if she said that he was going to make her say. 

"Holy shit!" 

But thankfully for everyone else in the elevator she said. "Are you Gendo's son?" 

"Why yes, yes I am." 

"Why have we never met before?" Asuka asked. 

Shinji looked over at his father and said, "you know I have no idea. Would you care to explain why you never brought me in on Nerv? Especially since I would be piloting these mechs that you were building?" 

"I don't have to explain myself to you." 

Shinji examined Asuka's plug suit. Around the wrists especially. 

Something dawned on him. 

"Yeah, I'm going to be an Eva pilot. I'm going to fly the big fuckers. You know the really big fuckers." 

"And I'm going to learn how to fly F16s." 

"Bullshit." Said Gendo. 

Shinji walked over to him and asked, "you think that impressed her? Or... anyone in this elevator?" 

Shinji looked Gendo clear in the eye and said. 

"You don't trust me, do you?" 

Shinji drew a folding knife and asked. 

"You want to impress her? Well, impress her with me! Impress her with me!" 

"Oh fuck." 

"I should go up and castrate that fucker right now. I'll take the blame for it man." 

"Your... Father?" 

"Yeah, save the Feds the cost of a trial." 

"Just, leave that weird fucker alone." 

"How do I know you haven't made a deal with them?" Shinji asked, pointing that same knife at me. "Did you put them onto her? Did you three have a little talk while I was getting the car?" 

"Oooooh kay, I think you're getting a little too into playing the part of the Samoan Lawyer. So, I'm going to go get some fresh air." 

I backed out of the room.

"Jesus, I can't believe this is going so smoothly. I'm surrounded on all sides by caricatures of used car salesmen in a stale Vegas casino at 1:30 in the morning. Well, might as well go all the way." 

"Okay, here we go, spinning the wheel, spinning the wheel, make me rich, make me very rich! Ee... Yes!" 

"That's ten." 

I enjoy winning. 

I was walking back up to the room with a bundle of cash. I had hoped that Shinji had passed out after his little bitch fit over his father. As I walked in the room I could see that was not the case. He was flopping around on the bed. He had taken a tab of acid. 

I looked closely, technically it was more like a quarter of a tab. 

"Shinji, you didn't need to do that."

"You said, this is a drug trip. How can I channel the spirit of the brown buffalo if I don't take drugs?" 

I shook my head and gently put him into bed. Smoothing the transition as much as I could. I held him for awhile but he insisted very strongly. 

"I'm already wussing out by doing this in a bed instead of a bathtub. Leave me alone, trust me, I need to be alone for this. You've... Helped all you can for now. But this next part... I got to do it amongst the Brown Buffalo. I must walk with the King. And with all due respect..." 

"Alright, King, masculine energies. I get it." 

I left him in a symmetrical body position as he whispered one word over and over again. 

"Instrumentality." 

As I left him in his room I made a conscious effort to put all thoughts of white rabbits out of both our heads. Whatever it was that Shinji wanted, he was going to get. 

I relaxed. 

Smoked some grass. 

And heard the song start playing. 

"To be... Lies." 

I was face to face with the man himself. 

I relaxed. 

I made it look like I was going to leave him alone when he gestured for me to come and sit down with him.

"Not that it's not good music, but can we go somewhere where we can hear our own thoughts if we're going to talk?" 

We blinked. 

We were in a pristine spot in a template forest next to a fast running river. 

Thompson looked at it. 

It was a river of LCL. 

"Good lord! Something... horrible happened where you came from, didn't it?" 

"Yeah." 

"You know this river isn't far from my house. I hope whatever the fuck this is stays in your reality." 

"I believe it should." 

"So, is that what led you here? Literal rivers of blood?" 

"No, no humanity has a bunch of other problems we got to mop up before we get to that one. Have you been keeping track of me?" 

"No, I just know you have come here. Why are you reenacting what Acosta and I did in Vegas? You look really young." 

"I am... Only 14, but I'm a cadet in the Royal New Zealand Air Force. As to why I'm here. Well, would you believe that your story holds a good chance of being used to arrest one of the most corrupt people in modern history." 

"Ah, good, interesting... Interesting use of a story of a string of felonies." 

"I know." 

"So, once this person is arrested. Then what?" 

"Then I have to join that corrupt persons... Son in piloting giant cyborg machines to defeat abominations from beyond this world."

"Okay, and then what?" 

"Defeating the Angels? Yeah, no, that's... Best case scenario, going to take awhile and I probably won't live through it." 

"Let's say you do. Then what?" 

"Then? I... Don't know. Cleaning up LCL spills like the one were sitting next to seems like a good idea." 

"Yeah, and after that's cleaned up, then what?" 

"I don't know. Write my memoirs? Live the life of a retired fighter pilot? Never really thought that far ahead... Oh, is... Is that supposed to be the moral of the story?" 

Hunter nodded in the affirmative. He added.

"A couple questions before you go, though. What's your sidearm?" 

"My sidearm?" 

"Yeah, you didn't try to reenact this without a sidearm? Did you?" 

"Oh yeah, what was yours?" 

He drew it. "Good old fashioned S&W 357." 

He offered it to me. 

I held up a finger and said. 

"One moment." 

I drew my sidearm, but I did take the round out of the chamber and dropped the magazine. 

We switched sidearms. 

"Good to see you got all the urine out." 

Thompson examined my pistol and asked, "nice pistol. Where's... Where's the serial number?" 

"Doesn't have one, twas made without one." 

"You CIA?" 

"No, I'm working with a guy who was CIA on this mission though." 

"What the hell are those creepy bastards up to now?" 

"Can't say really, for a wide variety of reasons." 

"You do know the CIA is untrustworthy, right?" 

"Yeah, but sometimes you just got to hold your nose and keep flying the plane. At least until the spook you're carrying jumps out." 

Thompson exhaled and offered me my gun back. 

I dropped the rounds out of his revolver and handed it back. 

"Just tell me one thing. Did anything ever happen with legal weed?" 

"Yes, it's been legalized in something like half the states in the union. For unrestricted recreational use. Or slightly restricted recreational use. Either way, there's that and there's a bunch of other legalization efforts moving forward. And acid is proving to be very popular with the rich and famous." 

"Oh it was always popular with the rich and famous. But that's part of the problem, isn't it?" 

"What do you mean?" 

Thompson pointed to his revolver and said. "What if I was to say that I'm an elite nob from some eastern college. And because of that I'm smart enough to use a firearm. Firearms should be restricted to the police, military and politicians like me. Anyone who doesn't fit into those categories found defending themselves with a firearm will be arrested." 

"If a fiend like you could get away with not hurting anyone with a gun for a lifetime then I say why not everyone. Decriminalize the drugs, let everyone who can manifest some responsibility own guns. There's freedom, then there's freedom from consequence. Most of what you admitted to in that book is damage that you did to yourselves and the city of Las Vegas. Vegas cleaned up the damage. How about you? Where did your high and beautiful wave take you two? I know exactly where it took both of you." 

"Well, if that's the case then you should probably get whoever you've got in place of Acosta out of this mission immediately. You've been exposing your friend to the spirit of something that probably pretty well beyond his ability to endure." 

"I think you might be surprised by my friends ability to endure. But thanks for the warning." 

"And remember..." 

"Don't trust the CIA?" 

"Yeah that goes without saying, remember the last thing I had to say about Acosta." 

Before I jolted back to reality I jolted into a bathroom where some hippie was noshing frantically on the sleeve of my uniform. As I locked eyes with the person who had just walked in on us. It was Asuka, in a Luftwaffe captains uniform. 

I woke up the rest of the way. The reenactment continued. I checked on Shinji, he was sleeping quite soundly. 

I wandered over to Shinji and whispered the last thing that Thompson had said about Acosta. 

"The banshee screams for buffalo meat. Wherever you wound up, stay there." 

Shinji shuddered to consciousness. The look on his face was one of perfect vulnerability and fear.

He reached up and said, "you are the Banshee." 

"I don't want to be, but I will if I have to." 

He exhaled and said, "it all returns to nothing. It just keeps tumbling down, tumbling down, tumbling down." 

The death wail of a mortally wounded buffalo echoed through the room. 

Shinji stretched. His body language went back to normal as he opened his eyes. 

"Mari?" 

"Hey, go back to sleep. I was just playing with a ghost."

"I know, someone offered him human blood once. Said it would take him higher than he had ever been. I offered him something way more potent. We... Shouldn't have any more trouble from..." 

Shinji fell asleep. 

I remembered that right about here I should have been typing. In the movie Thompson launched off into some spiel about what it was like to be alive in San Fran in 1965 and what a great thing it was. I wasn't there, I wasn't born. My parents weren't even born then. I wasn't tuned to that frequency. The past is another country, they do things differently there. Knowing what happened afterwards. I couldn't see much triumph over old and evil. Old? Perhaps. Evil? No, no Thompson and his ilk had no hope of using as much evil they way they did and ever hope to triumph over it. They had pushed too hard, too fast, demanded too much. The establishment pushed back. Then a curious thing happened. They pushed back against the pushback. When Thompson died his funeral was attended by numerous figures in politics and the media. John Kerry... A democratic presidential candidate, for crying out loud.

In the end they got their victory. Their high and mighty wave spread from academia to practically everywhere. It submerged the state of California. They became the establishment there. They worshiped at the altars of Thompson and Acosta. Viva la raza. Fuck the establishment. Well, what happens when those who say that become the establishment? Do you become the honkies? Respectable heroin salesmen?

Maybe when that day comes it will mean that the end of the drug war has come at last. Or maybe that blasted conflict is doomed to mutate and go on until the last angry Rotarian in existence finally keels over from a massive heart attack. 

As I looked out onto the city and thought about all that we had lost to the war on drugs I was reminded of the words of a USAF officer concerning the end of the Vietnam War. 

"We could have won that war. We could have gone in there and turned the entire country into a self lighting car parking lot. But we would still be there, Americans would still be dying there, every day. And my son would probably be part of an army of occupation of North Vietnam. So maybe the end we got was the end we deserved and we should just be glad it's over."


	4. Slipping the noose.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Continuing the reenactment, Mari slips out of Vegas and has a little adventure with some unexpected characters in the desert. The importance of driving safely and responsibly is brought up. 
> 
> Along with a blast of buckshot into a murderers hand. 
> 
> And we wander into someone else's acid flashback. 
> 
> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kC29pd_5sQU

I woke up and yawned. 

Ring! 

I grabbed the phone. 

"Alfogolowageeba?" 

"Hello, This is your wake up call, it's ten am." 

I hung up the phone. 

Shinji was gone, Jedburgh was gone. The conference was over. Everything was unfolding like clockwork. Looking around a hotel room that was way less messy than what I was expecting. Cutting the $33 an hour grapefruit pipeline had made this psychedelic hayride much smoother. I snuck down to the parking garage. Luckily someone had already loaded several boxes full of documents to indict Seele, the drugs, the guns and a couple boxes of towels in the car earlier. I really thought I was going to get away clean when someone came running up to the car shouting. 

"Miss Makinami! Miss Makinami!" 

I slammed on the brakes. 

"Oh well why not. Many fine books have been written in prison." 

"What?" 

"Uh, we have a message for you. It's for somebody named Thompson? But it says care of Mari Makinami. Does that mean anything?" 

"Yes it means a lot, thanks." 

"Yeah, I checked the register for this man Thompson. We don't show him but I figured that he was part of your team." 

"He is. Don't worry, I'll get it to him." 

"What confused us was Director Jedburgh's signature on the message from his office in Los Angeles when we knew he was right here." 

"Right, you did the right thing. Never try to understand a message in military intelligence. Most of the time we use codes. Especially with Director Jedburgh." 

"Um, tell me, when will the Director be awake?" 

"Awake? What do you mean?" 

"Well, um, my manager would like to meet him. It's nothing unusual. He just likes to meet all our large accounts... Put em on a personal basis. Just a chat and a handshake." 

"Of course, but if I were you I would leave the Director until after breakfast... Because he is a very crude man. What in the world is that?" 

"No!" 

"But he will be available?" 

"Look, the message is scrambled. It's actually from Thompson, not to him. Alright now I've got to go. I've got to get to the conference."

"But there is no hurry, the conference is over." 

"Not for me." 

"Well, okay... Let's have lunch!"

"Righty o!" 

I was going the speed limit I swear. 

I was so nervous that I had the cruise control set on the speed limit. Check my body cam if you don't believe me. Regardless, perhaps because this was a reenactment I saw the flashing lights in my rearview mirror. 

"Lord, I'm pretty sure you can hear me right now. Tell me the weaknesses of the Angels attacking earth. Tell us why you have sent these monstrosities after us! Tell me what this is all for!" 

I stomped on the gas as the police car pulled in closer. 

I had to go off script again. I knew we were being watched, I knew it deviated from the script but I did it anyway. I needed high speed escape and evasion experience and I needed it now. 

Song selected. 

I pressed down on the accelerator. The land battleship sped up to 100 mph. This thing was too unwieldy. Even with power steering. Next time I rent a car or buy one. It would have to be something smaller and lighter. Maybe an Ariel Atom. 

Next time. If I live through this chase. 

🎶"All the lights go down as I crawl into the spaces."🎶

I sped up further. 

🎶"Life tearing at the seams." 🎶

The highway was clear and straight. I continued to accelerate. 

The front end began to shimmy. 

And the cop was not dropping off. 

🎶"Waaaaaaaait, I don't ever want to be here." 🎶

There was traffic ahead. I could slow down, I could have stopped. I could have made preparations for a bat turn. But instead I chose to slalom through traffic at a decent clip

🎶"Like punching in a dream, breathing life into the nightmare!" 🎶

"Fuck! Running low on gas." 

🎶"If it falls apart, I shall surely wake it." 🎶

"Fuck! Fuckers still on my tail! Next time bring caltrops!" 

🎶"This is worse than it seems."🎶

We got clear of the traffic. 

We had slowed down just enough for me to be confident in my ability to execute the turn. 

As I made the turn I had expected her to go fish tailing off onto the opposite side of the road. Nope, the police car turned in and closed with me. As we turned in tighter and tighter circles I expected to lock eyes with Gary Busey. 

The officer was not Gary Busey. It was Misato. 

🎶"Whoa, they'll get through, they'll get you." 🎶

But I don't think that freaked me out quite as much as when she drew a goddamn Colt Python revolver and tried to shoot out my left front tire. 

I abandoned the turning circle and stomped on the gas. Maximum acceleration. 

I heard the unmistakable sound of at least three more gunshots zipping past the vehicle. I lost her as I came down a hill. Then I saw the line that I simply couldn't cross. 

🎶"In the place that you wish was a ghost." 🎶

There were a pair of vehicles in the road ahead. A school bus and a semi truck passing the school bus. I slowed down and stopped. Pulling over in a park adjacent to the freeway. 

🎶"Waaaaaaaaaait, I don't ever want to be here. Like punching in a dream, breathing life into the nightmare." 🎶

The police car came barreling up. I was already out of the convertible as the song bubbled to a stop. 

"What seems to be the problem officer?" 

"Do you have any idea how fast you were going?" 

"After you started chasing me? I think I hit 180 MPH. Personal best speed for me, at least in this car. I was going the speed limit when you flashed your lights. Why did you flash your lights?" 

She pulled out a breathalyzer and stuck it in my mouth unceremoniously. 

"O.oo."

"License and registration!" 

"One moment." 

As I reached for it I asked, "would you be so kind as to empty your revolver, officer?" 

Misato looked at the ID. 

She knew she was fucked. 

"Um..." 

"Yeah, federal creds. You probably don't get to see those every day. Feel free to run those up your chain of command. But for now. Open your revolver, officer!" 

"Uh, Why?" 

"Because I would like further photographic evidence of the four bullets you fired at me and my vehicle." 

She unholstered her revolver and opened the cylinder. 

"Okay, all... Six rounds fired. Not bad, if I had been part of a cartel hit squad you would be dead with an empty gun, Patrolwoman." 

I took photos of the revolver. Kicked out the brass from her gun, collected it in an evidence bag, reloaded the revolver from a speed-loader on her belt and shoved everything back in her belt. 

"Now, do you want me to get back to work? Oh wait, hang on." 

A school bus full of children drove slowly by. Their attentions drawn by the flashing lights of the police car. I grabbed Misato, held her next to me and whispered. "Just smile and wave... you backcountry yutz! If you had kept chasing me you probably would have been wearing some of those kids as a hood ornament." 

Once the bus was out of sight I took my ID back and said. "Now fuck off and let me do my job. I'm sorry that some bureaucrat didn't fill you in on the latest international spy thriller du jure. Let's just call this one a draw, okay?" 

As I drove through the streets of Baker I wondered. "Shinji stayed in the car and took on Acosta's role. Thompson encountered the hitchiker out here. Who am I supposed to..." 

I was almost out of fuel so I pulled into a gas station. 

"Eeeeeeeee yike! Sweet Jesus it's him!" 

Gendo had just walked out of the gas stations bathroom. 

We definitely locked eyes with each other as I peeled rubber out of there. 

"Well, they've nailed me goddamn it. I'm almost out of gas, trapped in some stinking desert crossroads called Baker. Gendo is closing in. The only reason he didn't shoot me was probably because he was waiting for reinforcements. They'll hunt me down like a fucking beast, which would be fine if I was in an Eva. I'd just step on them. But I'm not, so I can't. I need my commanding officer, immediately!" 

"What are you doing in Baker? Didn't you get my message?" 

"What message?" 

"You lunatic, you stuck that close to the script? The Nerv manufacturers conference is over but Seele is having its own conference at the Wynn Casino. I reserved a suite there. Everything is arranged. So... Why are you in Baker?" 

"Baker? No, no, I'm... Not in Baker. I'm... Poolside at the Wynn right now." 

"Sure you are." Director Jedburgh said as he looked at the feed from a security camera in a Baker truck stop. 

"I didn't say that we should be armed to the teeth just because it sounded cool. Mari, you have permission to step on them." Jedburgh hung up the phone. 

I saw three men closing on me from behind. Gendo, a soldier and some guy who looked like a local meth dealer. 

I saw them get out of a black GMC Suburban SUV and waited for them to get close. 

"Okay, shoot to wound is the preferred option. Want these guys alive so they can talk. Here we go, this is literally the sort of thing you signed on for." 

"All energy flows according to the whims of the Great Magnet."

I looked in the rearview mirror. 

The soldier and the local man were drawing handguns. 

"I will not defy him."

I drew the shotgun. 

I aimed and as I pulled the trigger the hand the soldier had been using to hold his handgun disintegrated in a blast of buckshot. 

The meth dealer looking guy dropped his pistol like it had turned into a venomous snake. Turned around and ran away. As I got out of the convertible Gendo kept his hands up. I walked up to him and seriously thought about blowing his heart out right there. Then I realized that I might be taking something that wasn't mine to take. At least not yet. I noticed that he had a full tank of gas in his vehicle and the keys were still in it. 

I put on a pair of medical grade latex gloves and took several items out of the trunk of the convertible. I did leave some choice pieces of evidence in said trunk. After transferring my things to Gendo's SUV. I applied a tourniquet to the bleeding soldier. The soldier was armed with a very nice HK USP 9MM with a suppressor. I didn't need the USP. Though I did want it and I figured that I might need the suppressor. I got in the SUV and tossed the keys to the convertible to Gendo. Saying. 

"I'll see you in Vegas for the final round, you piece of shit." 

Then I fired the Hi Point at one of the tires of the convertible, popping it. 

"Have fun explaining that and a bleeding Luftwaffe Major to some Nazi outback law enforcement agency, byeeee!" 

I drove away quickly, but not urgently. Just slow enough to not grab police attention. This SUV was a much more reassuring vehicle than the convertible. I felt quite comfortable behind its tinted windows and diplomatic license plates. The whole time I had been driving the convertible I had been worried that the Vegas PD would pull me over and accuse me of the heinous crime of underage driving. 

I plugged in my iPod to the SUVs sound system and cued up a pair of songs that I had been not looking forward to listening to. But I knew I had to see what they would show me. Two versions of White Rabbit. One by Jefferson Airplane and the other by Emilìana Torrini.

🎶"One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small.🎶

🎶"Feed your head! Feed your head!"🎶

I had an idea how we could finish this. I clipped my body cam onto a vent and made a short video to myself. 

"I realize now."

"I realize why Acosta said that he had just gotten back from Vietnam."

Sorry, I'm jumping ahead a little bit. Yes, preface, ahem. "Hey honkies! You wanna buy some heroin? I just got back from Vietnam." 

"Acosta never went to Vietnam. So why did he say that? Just to mess with the squares? Well, probably yes. But now I know where he went in his mind when he took the booklet of acid. He found itself harmonized, quantum locked one might say with a soldier in Vietnam who had picked a really really bad time to have an acid flashback. When I listened to the first version of White Rabbit. I saw a battle, in the Vietnam war. I recognized the uniforms and equipment. I particularly recognized one piece of equipment, a PT-76 tank. The NVA didn't use tanks very much in that war. It shouldn't be too hard to find out which battle it was. I might even be able to find the soldier whose eyes Acosta and I witnessed the battle through." 

"I saw the entire battle play out in the course of that song. While Acosta was spluttering around in that bathtub full of grapefruit chunks he witnessed that event as close as any person could possibly have witnessed it. And thus the Vietnam line. And also possibly why he said that in such a weird sounding voice. That might have been the mind of some relatively short, thin framed soldier trying to speak through an enormous brown buffalo's vocal cords." 

"Or maybe he was just trying to freak out the squares, either way. The second version of White Rabbit is an even better battle theme. I was piloting a Sukhoi SU27 variant. Near Japan? Not sure. I was part of a combined arms operation that led an Angel into an ambush with Shinji Ikari piloting Unit One. Came out of low clouds. The... Initial barrage by my squadron was 30 N2 missiles. 'Call Alice, when she's ten feet tall, indeed!' I led the Angel straight into a line of submerged N2 mines which detonated in sequence. The Angel shot down three of my squadron. I think they were all able to eject though. I had to do some pretty hairy maneuvering in a super maneuverable fighter to keep ahead of it. My HUD showed 9 Gs regularly, I think I hit 11.5 G for a hot second there. Shinji was able to kill the angel with a huge knife. I and the rest of my squadron were picador's. Shinji was the matador."

"Climbed to 48,000 feet. Power dove to 700 feet. Couldn't go too fast at that altitude or the canopy might have crumpled in. The Angel's arms, or tentacles, or whatever those things were reached out to my fighter. I was just barely able to outrun it, I felt like a little girl desperately trying to escape the grubby clutches of face pinching relatives at a family reunion. Ran out of fuel two seconds before Shinji gutted the thing. Seemed like everything was in slow mo was as I passed the Eva. Pulled straight up, then glided in for a dead stick landing, that was fun. I wonder if Snyder has any idea what he was fucking around with? The currents he was tapping into? He certainly left his own marks on weaponized psychedelia. But as strange as this may sound, perhaps he didn't go far enough. Or perhaps he was probably too distracted by all the up skirt shots. Sucker Punch was a fun movie. But the violence in it is just a tad too stylized for my taste. Either way, the music was different. It's not a 1-1 equivalency. Then again nothing in this story is. But like everything else in this story so far it's played out much smoother than I expected. I had a much easier time believing Unit 1 slicing that Angel as opposed to seeing Baby Doll skewer that dragon." 

"The first time Jedburgh told me about my fight with Zeruel, I was terrified. I couldn't imagine myself doing any of that. A berserker. He... Jedburgh made sure that I learned all there was to know about berserkers. The earliest known weaponizations of psychedelics go back much further than those Viking warriors. But it's usually the same thing. Take something, lose your mind, gain super-strength and speed. Raw power at the price of tactical ability. Weaponized psychedelia seems like an excellent tool against the Angels. So... let's keep chasing rabbits." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://youtu.be/EUY2kJE0AZE
> 
> https://youtu.be/gwdL_Zn5nCE


	5. Frogs in a dynamite pond.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The SEELE conference gets underway, Asuka reemerges following an accidental dosing and the intention of SEELE is revealed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://youtu.be/pM9e8nNXYVI

There was a congressman from Michigan. And he explained that he had a reservation.

But... He was on the late list and so his reservation had been transferred to the Moonlight Motel...

"We've already paid for our goddamn room! Listen to me you filthy little faggot! I want to speak to the manager! Now! Now! Now!!" 

"I am very sorry sir." 

"Hey, listen, I really hate to interrupt, but I wonder if I could just slide on through and get out of your way my name is Mari Makinami. My friend Jedburgh made the reservation." 

"Makinami, Mari... Certainly sir." 

"And let me get some lime chunks delivered to my room. What do you think?" 

"I say okay. And if there is anything else you need, don't hesitate to call me, Sven." 

"Okay, thank you very much, Sven. You, I know, I know I know, it's hideous. You're going to be fine though. You're doing well. I'll see you later, pardon me, bye Sven." 

"Look what you did! Look what you did!" 

As I walked into the room I couldn't help but say. 

🎶"Magic... Moments, when two hearts are... Wow, you guys really went the extra mile, ah! What the fuck! She's biting my leg! Get her off of me!" 

"Can't be helped. Asuka, down girl." 

"Why... How in gods name? Why is Asuka here? Why is she in a plug suit?" 

She looked up at me and said in a very childish tone of voice. "Hi!"

I waved my hand in front of her face. 

"Do you... Know who I am?" 

Asuka replied, "you're the big meanie who embarrassed me!" Then she looked away and started burbling like a baby. 

"Sweet marmalade, Shinji! I desperately need peace, rest, sanctuary. I was just in a gunfight for crying out loud!" 

"Gunfight?" They both said. 

"Yeah, with Gendo no less." 

"Do you have video? Can we see it?" Asked Shinji. 

"I suppose so, but if Asuka is having an acid trip I don't want to show it to her. I blew a man's hand off." 

"Ive seen people die. My mother killed herself the day I got into Nerv! I saw her... body. Just... Hanging... There." 

It was Asuka's cheerful tone while saying that that convinced me to do it. 

"Okay, give me a minute. I'll just have to plug a few cables in."

"Jedburgh probably has better footage." I observed as I cued up the clip on the hotels tv. 

"I will not defy him!" 

Asuka saw my target clear as day. 

She whispered. "That man you shot." 

The camera moved in closer as I applied the tourniquet. Asuka was silent until I turned off the tv. 

"My mother didn't kill herself, she was murdered. Shinji. Ever since this stuff kicked in I've been watching it all play out, clear as day, right now. Three men broke into our house and hung her and staged the scene to look like a suicide. Those men were sent by your father, weren't they?" 

"Probably, I don't know though. I'm still pretty new to this stuff." 

Asuka breathed deeply. 

"You do realize that I have to see your father die now. And I don't mean quickly in an electric chair. I mean, I have to strangle him to death with his own entrails."

"Asuka, we're taking him down. We're taking him down for everything. We have got this, but you are tripping on acid and apparently your very closely aligned right now to the spirit of you mother. Your mother is dead, but now might be a good time to talk to her if you can." 

"I can't!" Asuka snapped out. 

She curled up in the fetal position. 

"I just can't, I could never reach her when she was alive. Now that she's dead, I can't..." 

I gently touched Asuka's shoulder. "After you've strangled Gendo to death with his own entrails what are you going to do after that?" 

"I... I don't know." 

Asuka got up. 

She walked towards a nearby closet and pulled out a backpack. From the pack Asuka pulled bits of a Luftwaffe captains dress uniform. "They wanted this too? Didn't they? The Luftwaffe. Why else would they send one of their own?" 

"Probably, this is a very vast conspiracy we're taking down." I replied. 

Asuka gestured to her plug-suit. 

"And this, sexy little getup you called it? If you became an Eva pilot, would you both have worn one?" 

"I guess so." Said Shinji. 

"Probably." I said. 

"You think I'm sexy?" 

"Not... Particularly." I said. 

"Why not?" 

"Asuka, I'm sorry, you're cute. And you're definitely very physically attractive... by schoolgirl standards. But I find you incredibly annoying." 

"Annoying!?" 

"Yeah I know we haven't been talking to each other directly for long. But I've read all about you." 

Asuka dropped her pack and the uniform, took four steps and thumped unceremoniously into a bed. 

"I'm sorry then. It's just... Mmmmmmrgh! It's just, I feel so good and I'm so mad that it's all because of some stupid... Drug, Shinji tricked me into taking. It's not fair!" 

I grabbed him and took him out of the room to chew him out. 

"You dosed her?" 

"Not on purpose. But we're sticking to the script, aren't we?" 

"Really? You dosed a fourteen year old kid who's mother has apparently just recently been murdered by... Dun, dun dun! Your father and you dose her with LSD? You saw enough of the movie to remember this part and you stayed to the script? Please don't tell me you also did the... Other thing that Acosta did with Lucy?" 

"Statutory rape and consensual sodomy? No, I found her downstairs five minutes ago, she was crying behind a potted plant. Because she knew you were right about showing her off her body to a bunch of power crazed dirty old men. I... I didn't even know I was dosing her. It was accidental exposure. I must have brushed something onto her by accident. I brought her up here to change into her Luftwaffe uniform, she started freaking out then you walked in." 

"This... Isn't our room?" 

"No." 

I looked at the door. Then I checked my room key holder. 

I was supposed to be in room 2042. This was room 2024.

"Whoa boy. Shinji, grab Asuka's stuff and grab her. We got to get out of here." 

Once we got to our room we sat Asuka down in a chair. She seemed to be wavering in and out of a catatonic state. Lights on, nobody home. I've never seen anyone who looked so blissfully contented after finding out about details like that about their mother's death. 

Her eyes began to focus on me. 

"You feel like my mother." 

"What?" I asked. 

Asuka gently took my left hand. 

"You knew my mother, didn't you?" 

"No, no I never met your mother. I don't even know her name. But, I did... Kinda, pilot Unit 2 for awhile." 

"You piloted my Eva? Why?" 

"Well it wasn't me, it was some other me. Another version of me. She piloted Unit 2 in a battle after you had been injured." 

"Why? Why is that important?" Asuka asked. 

"You don't know? Shinji!?" 

"Hey, I didn't get a chance to tell her! Five minutes, remember?" 

"Okay, Asuka, I know this is a hell of a thing to lay on anyone. But especially someone with a head full of acid. But, Eva units are partly made up of cloned flesh of their pilots mothers. And usually incorporate parts of their... Souls." 

Asuka smiled. 

Then laughed. 

Asuka stared at me and said. 

"You look like Sonic the Hedgehog right now." 

"What?" 

"It looks like your covered in blue hedgehog quills. And your teeth look stupid." 

I looked at myself and said, "I don't see anything. But that sounds like what happened when I... Oh crud, Za Beast-Mode." 

I backed up and said, "maintain." 

Asuka looked at me and asked. "You let her that far in!?" 

"Yeah, apparently, sorry. I wouldn't have done it if I had had any other choice."

Asuka looked at what she was wearing. 

"Get me out of this. Get this off of me right now!!!" She shrieked. 

I grabbed a backpack, luckily there was a nice copy of 'Lucy's' costume in the pack. I had Shinji turn around as I unzipped Asuka's plug-suit. 

"What are you doing?" Shinji asked, his eyes still turned to the wall. 

"Mitigating the effects of a freak out. How would you like to wear a suit that pretty much says, "get in your mother! Shinji?" 

A few moments, a helpful camera pan or two away and Asuka was now dressed as the character of, Lucy. 

Asuka sat in the bed with a defeated look on her face. 

"So, we're in a movie right now?" Asuka asked in a flat tone. 

"Reenacting a movie, while conducting an investigation." I replied. 

"Of who?" 

"Gendo Ikari. We will take him down, I swear." 

"I know, I trust you more than I probably trust anyone at the moment. I saw you point a shotgun right at his chest. But that's not what I want to talk about. You went into beast mode with my mother? Tell me, could you reach her? I never could." 

"I'm... Afraid not. Some other version of me and even that other version didn't know... Her for that long. And technically that wasn't your mother its..." 

"Yeah yeah, parts of my mother built into a giant fucking robot. Do you still think I'm pretty?" 

"Yeah." 

"What's in the box?" 

She was pointing to the case with all the drugs in it. I answered. "A variety of narcotics." 

"Can I see?" 

"You can look, but don't touch, okay?" 

Asuka nodded as I brought it over. 

She stared at the contents. Gently hovering her hands around the various substances. Like she was looking for something. 

She laid her hand on the mushrooms. 

Her body language changed. Her posture changed, and instead of looking at us with a bubbly, daydreaming look her eyes seemed deadly serious. 

"Can I trust you?" Asuka asked seriously. 

"I don't know, I'm not sure if I can answer that question. In all honesty if we were going to trust each other. I'd much rather we do it when we were all sober." 

Asuka looked at Shinji. 

"Brown Buffalo, Brown Buffalo, come out and play."

"What?" 

"Okay..." 

Asuka looked down at the drugs for a few more minutes and tapped the mushrooms again. "This, a decent dose of this. I need to take some of this. Measure it for me." 

I measured out a moderate dose of mushrooms and she ate it. Closing the case and pushing it back to me. 

I got her a glass of water. 

Shinji sat down on a couch, I sat down on a chair while Asuka's took one of the beds. For what seemed like an eternity she just alternated staring at me or Shinji. I didn't say anything and neither did he. 

The look on Asuka's face got progressively angrier and angrier. Then sadder and sadder. Then after about an hour of this creepy silent staring something shifted gears on Asuka. She started flapping her hands and crying. 

"She... Someone tried to reach me. She was me, but she couldn't reach me. She was me, but she couldn't reach me. She was me, but she couldn't reach me. She was me, but she couldn't reach me. She was me but she could reach me!" 

"Calm down." 

"You calm down! You!!!" 

Asuka exploded off the bed and ran to a window. The city stretched below her. 

"They... They resent me? I saved their lives and they resent me? And they resented you too? Didn't they?" 

"Some did, others don't." Shinji said. 

"Why do you keep fantasizing about me and you in an elevator?" Asuka asked. 

"How do you know about that?" 

"Extreme transparency. Another psychedelic side effect. Asuka, since you're going to find out anyway you should probably know that, well, you know what they say. Show don't tell." I said as I got my cell phone out and cued up a video. 

"Now that's what I'm talking about."

"Would you? Would you make us a new world? Shinji?" Asuka asked after watching that in an indescribably weak and sweet tone of voice. 

We definitely stuck too close to the script this time.

Asuka fainted. 

I grabbed Shinji by the collar and said. "If I ever hear you say, 'you know what, make me a new world.' I will kill you with a tire-iron." 

"Okay, alright, fine." He replied. 

"Criminy, I really hope she sleeps through this." I said. 

Turned out she did... Kinda. 

Through careful mediation. Music, mostly classical and lots of gentle hand holding and kind gestures. Shinji and I guided Asuka through some bizarre tour of her own mind. To aspects of herself that she didn't even know were there. 

She cried a lot. 

Occasionally she smiled. 

More than once she threw herself at Shinji, and me and both of us. And at one point she launched into a lecture about how she was the goddess of a new religion and that if we didn't both have sex with her right now that she would bring all thundering to the ground. 

We declined. 

She tried, she really tried. But the world didn't crumble around us as she threw imaginary lightning bolts from her hands. 

After that she flopped onto the bed and looked at her clothes. 

"These aren't my clothes." Asuka said. 

"No, it's a costume. Of a character from a movie. Lucy." I said. 

"Tell me about her." 

"Aough, oof, not much to tell. Played by Christina Ricci. Cute, the character was very naive. She liked to paint." 

"Can I paint too?" 

"Hmm, why not. I'll go scrounge up some art supplies." 

It didn't take long. Pretty soon I had a variety of finger paints and cardboard canvases. We set Asuka up in the bathroom so she wouldn't make too much of a mess. Within minutes it was clear that she was really getting into it. Shinji and I left her in there while we debriefed and I went to unpack the rest of the stuff in the car. 

About an hour later we checked on Asuka. She had completed dozens of crude paintings. One showed a woman being hung. Others showed a variety of things. Fields of flowers, horrifying grotesque faces. Deer leaping through streams, battleships being cleaved in half, all sorts of stuff. 

Asuka had run out of paint. She stood up, washed the paint off her hands in the sink, then stepped into the shower. She had gotten paint... Everywhere. 

Once she was clean Asuka wrapped herself up in a bathrobe and went to bed. Sleeping off the rest of the trip. She slept for 12 hours straight, not waking until the next morning. 

When the next morning came and she jolted awake she burst out of her room to find me and Shinji watching the news. 

"Are you okay?" Shinji and I both asked. 

Asuka put her hands all over her face and went to the bathroom. Finding all the paintings in there. 

She went up to the one with a hanging figure. 

"Would you go to the gates of hell to save me?" Asuka asked. 

I replied, "I'd like to think so." 

"Yes." Said Shinji. 

"Why? What have I ever done for you? How do you know I would do the same?" 

"We don't know. But you don't need to. I've signed onto military service. That means going to the gates of hell to save people. Maybe people I don't like. Maybe people I find incredibly annoying. But I'll try to save them. Might get killed in the process. But thems the breaks sometimes." I said. 

"Why are you here? Why are you both helping me?" 

"Well, in my case, because it's an assignment. And like I said to you earlier. I'm not fond of the idea of having a commanding officer who is massively traumatized. Someone clearly not over the death of their mother. Nor should they be, Shinji?" 

"I, uh, I suppose I'm just going along with Mari for now."

Asuka whipped out another painting, of a... By now familiar scene of Shinji and Asuka in an elevator. 

"My plug-suit is red, this one is pink. I was wearing your plug-suit, wasn't I?" 

"I... Um, well... It's just a stupid, crudely drawn little cartoon. Perhaps you shouldn't read too much into it." I said. 

Asuka laughed. 

It was weird. It sounded deep and genuine and utterly unpracticed. She laughed and laughed and laughed as she stood up, walked out of the bathroom and looked out upon the city. 

Asuka asked in a grim tone. "Last night... I, I wanted you both to fuck me. I wanted to see what you both could do. I wanted to feel you both inside of me. And you turned me down." 

"I think it would have been Second degree rape under the circumstances." I said. 

"But it would have been fun, it would have been intense! It would have been... I think it's time for me to leave. I need to get our of here. Before I go can I ask one small favor? Let me hold your hands. Both of your hands." 

Asuka took my hand and Shinji's. 

She gradually put more and more of her weight into our hands. 

"Lift me up, just once." Asuka asked. 

We did so. 

We held Asuka above the floor for about a minute. 

She let herself down. 

Asuka looked at her right hand and asked me, "why did you put a tourniquet on my mother's assassins arm?" 

"I haven't killed anyone in my life and I wasn't sure I should start with him. If I had known he had killed your mother... I don't know. What would you have wanted me to do?" 

"What if I told you to kill him?" 

"I probably would have handed you the guys own pistol and said..." 

I drew his pistol with two fingers out of a drawer. 

"You do your own dirty work. Live by multiple gunshots to the back of the head and have it ruled a suicide. Then perhaps he should die from multiple gunshots to the back of the head. Having said that. We might need that bastard alive to identify the other two involved in your mother's death." 

"Okay, that's... Logical, and I suppose by shooting the guy you've done more than I have so far. Just tell me, does getting shot in the hand hurt?" 

"Yeah, there's a lot of bones and tendons and muscles and all sorts of delicate components. Difficult things to put back together. And I hit that guy with buckshot. That's like nine 30 caliber rounds shredding through meat." 

"Good, I think I want to leave now." 

I made a call. A policeman came up to our room to take Asuka away. The policeman grabbed the case full of drugs and said that it was time to go back on script. Seele was having its big conference soon and that we should be there to hear their plans. We were to leave our phones and recording devices in the room. We would be searched on the way in. I figured that sounded like a suitable substitute for the lecture of L Ron Bumquivst. Shinji and I were on our way there when the policeman added. 

"Oh, and don't forget. If at any point you see a blinking red light, get out of the room immediately." 

I looked at Shinji and repeated. 

"Blinking red light. We get out. Okay?" 

"Okay." 

Security in the amphitheater was heavy and we were searched. But we were allowed to take our seats. 

The crowd of the auditorium was absurd. Instead of the police chiefs of several hundred towns we were surrounded by, the mayors of new York city, Boston, Philadelphia. Several notable figures in media and a variety of politicians from all over the globe had been assembled. 

"This... Is everyone we believe to be involved?" Asked Shinji tersely. 

"Yeah, a... Few more than expected." 

"And I know we weren't expecting the queen of England. Prince Andrew, or perhaps even Harry. But not the fucking queen!" 

"You think that's nuts, look who's taking the podium." 

"Thank you, thank you. Please... Ah... be seated. My fellow members of Seele. We have come here today to do two things. To celebrate the recent activation of Evangelion Unit Two and address certain... myths and criticisms of our efforts that seem to be undermining our long term goals." 

The president started clicking through the slides of a PowerPoint presentation. 

"Some people, and you know who you are. Have voiced criticism that instrumentality is a flawed concept. To them I ask, what's the definition of the word Instrumentality? 'The fact or quality of serving as an instrument or means to an end.' That end will be nothing less than the perfection of human civilization as a single, invincible, all powerful entity! It is only by doing this that we can hope to stand a chance in the looming battle with the race that seeded life on this planet. Yes we have collectively suffered, yes we have endured horrors after we triggered second impact. But in order to win this war we must be willing to sacrifice and we must be willing to pull all of humanity into this effort. A perfected, invincible humanity that can stand before God itself and prove our existence! It is only by our unwavering collective will that we can end this threat once and for a..." 

"Red light, time to go Shinji!" 

"I don't, I'm not..." 

I grabbed Shinji and hustled him out of the auditorium. 

The doors slammed open. 

We ran through. 

The doors slammed shut.


	6. Criticality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jedburgh springs his trap on SEELE. While Mari reenacts the adrenachrome scene.

"That we can..." 

The former president saw the doors slam open and shut. 

He heard a soft hissing noise from the ceiling. 

All he could think to say was. 

"Do I... taste metal?" 

The glorified power point device over his head switched from its screens depicting statistics, evidence, studies, graphs and other such information to an image of Darius Jedburgh. 

"Why yes you do mister... former president. But it's not just because of the ionizing radiation coming out of the small nuclear device placed inside your podium. It's also because, while you've been droning on and on. The air in that room has been saturated with a cocktail of the most powerful hallucinogenic substances known to man. I'm not doing this just because putting every single one of you on trial would run the risk, however small. Of some of you escaping justice for your crimes. Mister president, if I made a point of not signing on for a new Jerusalem in the Milky Way then was did you think was going to happen when someone like me found out about this? Now, smile for the birdie!"

The nuclear device triggered. 

It wasn't explosive. It was more like two Lego carts that were designed to deliver a pair of plutonium bricks to a quick, satisfying, clank. The technical term for such an event a criticality. Some might call this a criticality accident. 

However this was... No accident. 

All the electronics in a certain radius failed as everyone in the room was hit with an utterly fatal dose of ionizing radiation. 

Nobody died though. 

Not yet at least. 

As the doors to the amphitheater swung open, staff in hazmat gear loaded the attendees of the Seele conference into waiting ambulances. 

By some odd effect of the attendees being given a simultaneous massive dose of psychedelics and neutrons. These... Titans of industry, notable figures in politics, media and academia were tranquil. They knew that their time was short and that they couldn't use what they had left fighting Jedburgh.

I didn't see any of this though. I had run us well out of the radius of the blast zone with Shinji straight up to our room. As the door slammed behind us Shinji exclaimed. 

"Oh god, oh god! Shit! These people are even crazier than I thought they were and I thought they were pretty fucking crazy. I mean..." 

My phone rang. 

"Hello Director." 

"Hey, so, we got everything we need. 5 by 5. Are you two okay?" 

"Okay, yeah, fine we're okay. We have the bad guys plan and I'm about to reenact the most insane drug trip in an entire collection of insane drug trips. Is Asuka okay?" 

"Asuka is fine, but there's been a slight complication. This operation won't be concluded until after we have found Rei Ayanami. So you're going to have to keep reenacting until you find her." 

"Okay, fine, any idea where she is?" 

"We... Don't know. I think Gendo took her off the grid when he figured out what was happening. But we're sure she's somewhere in Las Vegas. My people will find her sooner or later." 

"Okay, talk to you later." 

I hung up the phone. 

I noticed the case was back. All the drugs inside were gone. Replaced by a handheld vaping device and a small vial of some kind of crystallized material. 

"Ah, he wasn't there! Gendo wasn't fucking there! He's probably coming for us right now. Where's the shotgun?" Shinji asked. 

"Right here, calm down Shinji. Your father is probably still trying to explain himself to a bunch of cops in the desert. And Seele is under arrest downstairs. Let's let Jedburgh handle things from here. I'm going to try to lie down, relax and try to forget about the fact that the fucking Queen of England was just arrested. Actually, You know what? How often does one get to say that they did hallucinogens in the same building as the queen of England or... Anyone like those people downstairs." 

"Well, I've trusted Jedburgh this much so far." I thought. 

I scribbled a note for Shinji to read. 

"As your lawyer I advise you to take a small hit on the device in your hands." 

I asked. "What is this shit?" 

He read the note further. 

"That shit? makes pure adrenachrome seem like... Ginger beer, man." 

"I've read about this stuff. Adrenachrome isn't what people think it is either. It's not harvested from a human body. It's just medical grade epinephrine that's been left out in the sun to turn pink. Just another body hormone. Where'd you get this?" 

Shinji replied, " This is a nice collection of thoughts to send you off on this trip, don't you think? Child molestation, smuggling, perhaps even child murder if you go on the old story of how adrenachrome is harvested?" 

I took the hit and went, "la la la la la la la la." My voice got deeper again and I said. "Hey, it's fear and loathing. Not fortitude and acceptance. That's me, nothing ventured, nothing..." 

Oh I was in trouble. 

If the acid had been like riding a rocket into orbit this was like being punched by Superman straight in the pineal gland. Then riding that punch into the sun. 

"You know what we need? Some strawberries." I think I heard Shinji say. 

As reality itself started to breathe around me Shinji very delicately started feeding me strawberries. This was a decent substitute to snorting opium off a revolver. Although I did wonder if it might be possible to take a swim. My whole body was heating up like crazy. 

"Even a god damned werewolf is entitled to legal counsel. You know, saying that out loud. That would be an interesting case to argue, wouldn't it? 'Your honor my client is deeply sorry for his actions but he was not in control of himself at the time. He has a medical condition.' Either way, I didn't dare turn the guy down. He might have grabbed a letter opener and gone after my... Pineal gland." 

"Shit, yeah, why not. We should try that. Just... Eat a big handful of that and see what happens." 

"Some of what?" 

"Chomp........ Extract of pineal."

"Sure, that's a good idea. One whiff of that stuff will turn you into something out of a goddamn medical encyclopedia, man." 

"Then becoming the sun." 

"Your head would swell up like a watermelon. You'd gain about a hundred pounds in two hours." 

"Right!" 

"Grow claws, bleeding warts." 

"Yes." 

"And then you'd notice about six huge hairy tits... Swelling up on your back." 

"Fantastic!" 

"You'd go blind. Your body would turn to wax. They'd have to put you in a wheelbarrow and when you scream for help. You'd sound like a raccoon." 

"Eeeeeeeeeeee!??" 

I had a butter knife in my hand. And... Apparently I was looking at Shinji a certain way. He gently took away the knife and said. 

"Mari, you can't have my pineal gland." 

"Come on Shinji! we both know that's not just any pineal gland. That's the pineal gland that triggers instrumentality. You mustn't run away, if I ate that you wouldn't have to run away anymore." 

"Sheesh, that stuff got right on top of you? Didn't it? Mari Illustrious Makinami. The most disciplined and levelheaded of all Evangelion pilots. You look like you're about to explode." 

"So I take it you're not... Running away?" I asked. 

Shinji replied, "why would I run away? The only monster I see right now is you." 

"Maybe you could just... shove me into the pool?" I groaned out. 

"Nah, if I shoved you into a pool right now you'd sink like a goddamn stone. You took too much, too much. Don't fight it, you'll get brain bubbles, strokes, aneurisms, you'll just wither up and die." 

Blessedly, mercifully. Shinji put on my favorite song as I was whisked off into a glorious state of non-dualistic consciousness. I did not have to contend with giant spiders, the killing of innocent people. Or about the hopes for peace and freedom of millions of people being suffocated.

I was in the tiniest semblance of control as I was allowed to see the end of the story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note added at the request of Mari. 
> 
> It is impossible to convey the shining, majestic glory of seeing that particular pineal gland light up at this frequency. Not devouring it required every last ounce of self control remaining.


	7. You are already dead.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Catching up to Rei and leaving the city. 
> 
> Atavistic: adjective; Relating to or characterized by a reversion to something ancient and ancestral.

I fell under stripes. 

I awoke under stars. 

🎶"I feel the cottonwood, whispering above. Tammy, Tammy, Tammy's in love." 🎶

When I woke up I was pleasantly surprised to see the room pretty much the same as it had been when I walked in. Nothing like the smoldering glazed ketchup stained craters or watery sewage all over the floor that I was expecting. Or for that matter any brain bubbles, strokes or aneurysms. Maid service had not been interrupted. I did notice piles of notebooks next to the bed though. 

How many nights and weird mornings had this shit been going on? According to my watch, not that long. 

As I staggered towards the bathroom I turned off Debbie and was pleasantly surprised to find no grotesque fiberglass legs, or a gun in the toilet bowl. The suites large bathtub looked immaculate. So I took a very nice, long relaxing bath. 

As I went over my recording devices I did find fragments rising out of the fog. And at one point I'm pretty sure I heard myself in a recording asking. 'How much do you want for the penguin?"

"Where the heck would I keep a penguin?" 

"Hey honkies! you wanna buy some heroin? I want to sell you some pure fucking scag! Cheap! The real stuff! I just got back from Vietnam!" 

That scene makes so much more sense now. Still doesn't make a damn lick of sense though. 

I found the knife, memories flooded in of where we had found Rei. The North Star Coffee Lounge. For reasons unknown to me she was there working as a waitress. 

Shinji clearly didn't recognize her. I had no idea what to do and in my paralysis we went... Back on script. 

"Two glasses of ice water with ice." 

My heart skipped a beat as Shinji passed Rei the note. 

"What is this?" 

"It's a napkin." 

"Don't give me any of that shit I know what that means you skinny goddamn pimp bastard!" 

"That's the name of a horse I used to own." 

"You listen to me, I got to take a lot of shit in this place but I don't have to take it off some pimp!"

"Well, anybody that knows anything knows that." 

"Pay your check and get out!" 

Shinji drew his knife and stabbed the countertop a few times. Asking, "you want to call the cops?" 

"How much for that pie?" 

"Thirty five cents." 

"How much is that pie?" 

"Thirty five cents." 

"Not per slice, I mean the whole pie? Three dollars? Four? Five?" 

Rei just stood there. 

Shinji took a handful of bills and shoved it into Rei's cleavage. We left the diner pretty soon after that. Even if the sight of the blade hadn't triggered bad memories. Most women don't tend to handle being threatened with a knife very well. As I got in the drivers seat I told Shinji. 

"You... Do realize that was Rei Ayanami and we are supposed to rescue her, right?" 

Shinji went back in the diner and grabbed her. 

As soon as she was in the vehicle I called for orders. 

"Have recovered package. Requesting exfil." 

"Roger, proceed to extraction airport." 

"Copy, have escort standing by. Coming in hot." 

I drove like a lunatic to the airport. Flashing lights in the rearview mirror. Our escort. Another SUV. This one with a Las Vegas police department paint job pulled ahead of us. 

I didn't know what to say. So I didn't say anything and focused on driving until I got to the airport parking lot.

Rei leapt out of the vehicle, a burly man, some kind of security, grabbed her by the shoulder. The burly man turned to me and challenged, "probably good advice." 

I replied, "if you have shit for brains." 

The man guided Rei to a waiting Cessna Citation X. 

I stayed in the car, Shinji stood by my window and asked. 

"Aren't you coming with us?"

"I'll be with you in a little while. I think I have to blast Gendo with a firehouse. Then I have to go to Colorado. I'll catch up with all of you later, I swear. And remember, don't take any guff from these swine. If you have any trouble, remember: you can always send a message to the right people." 

I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. 

"See you soon." I said. "Now go!" 

"Well, there they go, Gendo's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutants never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, too rare to die." 

And Shinji just had to do the little V for victory thing, didn't he?

The police officer who escorted us there got out of his vehicle and jogged up to me. 

"Further orders from Jedburgh?" I asked over the sound of engines throttling up. 

"Yeah, Gendo's still in the wind. We need you as bait." 

"That's what I figured. What happened with Seele? Are they all in custody?" 

"No, they are tripping all the balls while dying of radiation sickness. Director Jedburgh granted them their wish for Instrumentality. Just with each other and for a very limited time only. Come on, I'll fill you in on the way back to the hotel."


	8. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our final chapter wherein we have a long meandering, Hunter S Thompson style discourse by our main character about the ongoing weaponization of psychedelics. Asuka has her confrontation with Gendo and we leave the state of fear and loathing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hallucinogens are sometimes known as Entheogens, entheogen is a Greek word that translates as, "to generate the god within." 
> 
> I suppose this story started as a writing exercise and then morphed into something else. An attempt to address certain ghosts in psychedelic culture? Perhaps it was just a fantasy to create at least one Evangelion timeline wherein the people I consider the real bad guys get what's coming to them. The goal of SEELE is instrumentality. To fuse all of humanity into a single entity with the power of a god. To anyone who has ever spent time researching psychedelics, we know that there are easier ways to do this. As appealing an idea as it may be to certain... ill informed people. Fusing humanity together would completely defeat the entire purpose of human existence. We could never have achieved what we have achieved if we had remained as one. 
> 
> At the dawn of creation a decision was made. A single entity chose to fracture into two. As time went by this fracturing continued until we have the situation that we are in now. Had that single entity chosen to remain as one then everything would look completely different. Perhaps existence wouldn't exist at all, as all of existence cancelled itself out in a wave form of perfect symmetry. 
> 
> It has been speculated that Asuka and Shinji are different aspects of Anno's personality. If so then Mari is likely another aspect. Perhaps one that emerged as a result of therapy, or personal realizations and growth that happened after the first version of Evangelion was completed. Perhaps an attempt on his part to 'fix mistakes made' by these other aspects. Or perhaps just one who is willing to sing as opposed to simply passively listening to music. Mari's hairstyle, berserker nature and red glasses make her a textbook example of what I consider a Last Line of Defense Archetype. Though one closer to the Homura Akemi end of the spectrum than the StarFan13 end of the spectrum. 
> 
> A primary intention of this story for me was to create at least one version of Mari who would have everything she needed to complete her mission. 
> 
> One way or another, She will be completing her mission later this year. 
> 
> I wish her the best.
> 
> https://youtu.be/h6fcK_fRYaI

🎶"Somebody's gotta save my soul! Baby will ya take my mind?! Honey, I'm the world's forgotten boy, the one who's searching', searching' to destroy."🎶

They were all dying and hallucinating wildly. I had insisted that we stop at a local hospital to see what I had help wrought before I went back to the suite. That... Congressman from Michigan was saying goodbye to his sanity as I walked by his bed. He pointed right at me and shrieked, "go away Banshee. Go away! you can't have my soul just yet!" 

The local authorities who were handling mop up work for Jedburgh deferred to me as one might defer to Genghis Kahn. They seemed to have things well under control. 

I left SEELE to their... Fate, returned to the suite and fell asleep. 

🎶"There you stood on the edge of your feather. Expecting to fly." 🎶

So I'm left here holding the pie that Shinji... Bought. It's not lemon merengue, it's strawberry. It's pretty good, actually. Who would have thought that Rei was such a good baker? Or maybe someone else made it. Either way, I'm eating it. It's evidence and there's no sense in letting it go to waste.

I can't tell you how much I've thought about this next scene. And now that I'm here, in this moment, or at least my version of this moment I find myself overwhelmed by the symmetry of all this. Going back decades, the rabbit hole went even deeper than I imagined. The events of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas took place in 1971. A year that saw the end of the Bretton-Woods agreement and the beginning of a great many other... Terrible things. Thompson said, 'we're all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled the sixties.' Where did that speed go? In the sixties the US government was able to do things that it simply cannot do anymore. All those resources, all that energy, all that speed. What happened to it? Did it really all just implode into a malaise of stagflation, economic crises, heroin abuse and corruption? The fifties were an interesting decade. Defined as they were by the coldest points of the Cold War and barely bridled nuclear optimism. This fermented into the sixties where the call seemed to be for either utopia or annihilation. The prevailing moods and culture of the seventies seemed to be that humanity was doomed and all of civilization was just a waste of time. If nuclear war didn't get us then the population bomb, or climate change or some horrible new virus or perhaps our own governments would slaughter us all and turn us into soylent green for some moronic reason. 

Then after years of Chicken Little Syndrome the sky did fall. Second Impact wiped out a huge chunk of humanity and now we wait anxiously for the next shoe to inevitably drop. 

Hunter's trip was intended to be some ridiculously ornate gravestone to acid culture. Politically and culturally the sixties casts a long shadow. A lot of the people of that era are still around. So is the culture, the music and above all else, the politics. The movie mourns these shortcomings. The book covers this somewhat differently. Thompson did not approve of the changes in trends, tastes and frequencies that happened during the years 1965 to 1971. Despite his rapacious intellect and remarkable talents I don't think he ever really saw the big picture. Perhaps no one of his era was able to see the big picture. It was a picture that had only partially developed at the time. Yet many people seemed to have a pretty good idea what was barreling headlong at them.

Drug culture is fickle and as prone to trends as any other. In 1965 the hip thing was psychedelics, especially LSD. Throughout the seventies it was heroin. In the eighties it was cocaine, transitioning to meth in the 90s and early 2000s. Perhaps this is simply that trend coming full circle. Meth is a hell of a drug, it will burn a human being down to a stump. Methamphetamine is a very Nazi drug in every possible sense of the word. Albrecht Mach Frei. Work shall set you free, and meth is very good for making people work beyond what humans are normally capable of. As meth and prescription opiates give way in popularity to psychedelics, perhaps allied with extremely potent legal weed this cycle might bring about a new flourishing in therapeutic as opposed to the escapist aspects of the drug culture.

That said, the circumstances that created the hallucinogenic culture of the mid sixties will simply never come again for a wide variety of reasons. A series of waves hit this planet starting in that era. When those waves were done the bedrock of what western civilization had been built on for centuries had been washed away. Those in charge had traded both the future and the past for an uncertain present. Vast resources alternately ransacked or allowed to lie fallow. Nation states, families and upstanding long established... Establishments replaced with globalism, nihilistic hedonism and institutionally mandated corporate whoredom. A leveraged buyout of western civilization. Golden parachutes for the corporate raiders and everyone else left with looted ruins where infrastructure used to stand.

In a mean and military sense Thompson and Acosta's acolytes are still out there, fighting battles that were won or lost decades ago. The trip may have been fatally flawed, ignorant of the meat hook realities that were lying in wait. But the trip continued anyway. All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy peace and understanding for three dollars a hit. Peace... Must come from within, it is not something that can be purchased or imposed by an outside force. Psychedelics can help with this process. But not like this. The CIA and other intelligence organizations have clearly continued to cultivate and develop the ongoing weaponization of psychedelics to the degree of refinement we see today.

The US Marine Corps is experimenting with micro-dosing LSD. Don't believe me? I wish I was lying about that. Where do you think Jedburgh got the blotter we started this trip with?

A mean and military sense. This theme of imminent slaughter across so much of psychedelic culture. They either couldn't see that they were being manipulated. Or perhaps they just refused to accept that the establishment was able to establish itself all the way down here at the opposite end of the frequency. Psychedelics are intended, at least, in my opinion. As a means of tuning human beings to frequencies beyond normal human experience. Tools to permit the human body and mind to take on raw consciousness from the universe itself to flow into a human life. An indescribable gift of life and we have used it to bring about untold, unimagined pain and death.

How can we be expected to love our fellow man when we have seen exactly what atrocities he is capable of? Is his pain our pain too? Lives play out, forward and backwards until we come to that agonizingly clear moment. When the bomb bursts, the knife plunges in or the bullet is fired and the pain blossoms again. Giving birth to new realities and mindsets that drive conflict onward.

So, their loss and failure, is ours too. What Thompson established in that destroyed hotel room was an illusion that meant different things to different people. As illusions are known to do. They say history is written by the victors and Thompson wrote more than a little bit of history, did he not? He was able to convince many many people to sympathize with him. That his actions. And the actions of those who spread the drug culture of his era, were right and correct. Despite what is now... Generations, plural, of failed seekers. People who deigned to divorce themselves from reality to the degree where we are attempting to deconstruct language itself until words lose all meaning and all we have is some kind of bizarre Orwellian politically correct speech.

Nixon died in 1994. But if you ask some people, you might think he is still running around wreaking havoc. Haunting the plastic palm trees and high grade formica of Las Vegas. Or perhaps stalking some delivery boy in New York City. Acosta is dead, Thompson is dead. Timothy Leary is dead, Jerry Garcia is dead and Nixon is dead. Are we not haunted by their ghosts? Most of the bold faced, over the top military-industrial corruption that Nixon stood for lived again. In the form of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld's actions during the second Bush administration.

Thompson lived long enough to see the second Bush administration. That must have broken his heart. Thompson committed suicide a few years after W Bush's election because a lifetime of hard living caught up to him in an unexpected way. Guys like Thompson, you would expect to hear he died of liver failure, or kidney failure. Or a heart attack or perhaps an old enemy catching up to him. Not in this case. What motivated him to suck start a 45. At least according to his family and close friends at the time, was his bones. Personally I think that when he conducted his little adrenachrome ritual it discharged huge amounts of residual drugs and toxins from his organs and allowed Thompson's bones to exist at a state of energetic resonance that allowed him to endure everything that life threw at him. But human bones are a more delicate thing than some believe. I don't even want to imagine how much pain Thompson endured as his bones bent and gave up on him. I suspect I shall never understand how all those drugs and grapefruit juice interacted in his system. Vitamin c can allow a person who has never experienced a psychedelic trip to experience one. Grapefruit juice does contain vitamin c. But it also contains a variety of other things. I think that might become my thesis. It's certainly something that I will study. I will look at available literature and one by one find out how all these drugs interacted with grapefruit. Something tells me that it's going to be the medical equivalent of driving a car by stomping on the brake, gas and clutch pedals as hard as you can all at once.

If I can figure out how an Eva unit works I can probably understand that, right?

From my own research. If ones body and particularly ones bones are to endure that kind of extreme psychedelic energy what you need is lots of magnesium, preferably backed up with boron supplements. If this trip has proven one thing to me it is that it is unwise to go with the $33 an hour grapefruit pipeline approach.

It's going to take me a little while to boil up a long term plan. Until then here I am. Tap tip typedy type typing away. Trying to pry part the fallacies and contradictions of lives lived in fear and loathing. But they all seem to come back to this same... Issue that needs to be faced. Ongoing weaponization of psychedelic culture. Becoming ever more refined as generations of writers, researchers, movie makers and warriors look deeper into this specific flavor of madness. To what purpose? Defeat the enemy! Who is the enemy? The communists? Well, why are they the enemy? Now it's the Angels. Who is it going to be next? The world waits with baited breath as wars wait for us to unpack like Russian nesting dolls. The last war usually seems to lead into the next one. With the occasional brief pause where you're supposed to be reloading. But in practice this time is usually used to sharpen daggers for the next round of backstabbing.

More and more veterans are using psychedelics to treat PTSD. Could this be classified as a de-weaponization? Is this the psychedelic equivalent of the end of the Cold War where the western allies went into the Soviet nuclear bunkers, took the weapons grade uranium and plutonium stockpiles. Turned it into nuclear fuel and used it to power western cities? Can all that pain and suffering be put to a productive use? Perhaps this is asking too much. Perhaps psychedelic advocates should, 'get their own house in order' before they go spreading more fallout that can completely eclipse the ideas of peaceful healing they expound. Kind of hard to 'smile on your brother' and 'love one another right now' when you're staring down the business end of a razor sharp hunting knife. Peace and universal brotherhood are high minded ideas. They ring hollow when expounded by someone who is running around accusing random people of... Killing Jesus.

Just for the record, I would never have voted for Hubert Humphrey. What a fucking tool!

As I look around a hotel room that has been the site of a more successful reenactment of Thompson and Acosta's trip than I ever dreamed possible. A room which didn't take one one hundredth of the damage that Acosta's room took. I still think about what they left behind. Was it their rage? Was it the drugs? Was it their sorrow? Was it the grapefruit? It was probably some messed up combination of all this and more. I know my hands aren't clean in this. Despite the fact that I had their lessons to learn from. With the... possible exception of a scag baron named Savage Henry. No one died in the making Acosta and Thompson's trip. While I find myself leaving a trail of hundreds of corpses behind me. Not the corpses of low level drug dealers either. To paraphrase The Joker, 'if a gangbanger gets shot or a truckload of soldiers gets blown up most people will not care, most people won't even notice.' There were quite a few mayors in that amphitheater. I don't know what this planet is going to look like once those people finish dissolving from the inside out. But this worlds going to change with them gone, that's for damn sure.

Having said that, I don't feel guilty about that. Do unto others and all that. I hope that the end of SEELE might being forth a creative destruction. Like a forest fire, clearing rotten trees. There will be pain. But it will be up to us wether that pain is worthwhile or meaningful, or just painful.

As the image of Thompson fades from the movie screen into a black vastness. The last we see of that horribly damaged hotel room. Draped in American flags is a faint twinkling shape, somewhat reminiscent of a hooked cross. As he talked about the old mystic fallacy, the desperate assumption of the acid culture. That belief that someone, or at least some force is tending to the light at the end of the tunnel. Is it a fallacy? And perhaps more importantly, how could something that simple and universal belong exclusively to...

"Knock knock knock." 

I grabbed the shotgun as I moved towards the door. 

I looked through the loophole. 

I opened the door. 

"Gendo, it's so good to see you again!" 

"Who... What in the unholy fuck are you? What have you done to me? What have you done to Seele!?!"

"Who am I! Who am I? I am... Mari, that's all you need to know. As to what I've done to you? I've taken part in a reenactment of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and the indictment of Seele. But killing Seele? I swear I didn't know that was going to happen. I thought they were just going to be arrested. I had no idea about the criticality accident... device... Thingy that was set off. Or dosing them all. You know I'm amazed that conference went ahead without you, Gendo." 

"Asuka?" 

"Gone. Not dead! Let me be clear on that. Witness protection or something. Shinji and Rei went with her." 

"Rei..." 

Gendo pulled a rusty but probably still able to fire bullets, snub nose revolver that he had probably purchased from a pawn shop twenty minutes ago for about a thousand dollars from his belt. 

"You could have killed me in the desert, why didn't you?" 

"Honestly, only one real reason. Because something that might be the mother of a friend of mine whispered in my ear. 'He is not yours to take.' And you know what? I'm okay with that."

The sound of an HK USP's hammer clicking back echoed through the hallway as a green light twinkled across Gendo's vision. 

Gendo turned around to see Asuka holding a pistol with a suppressor on it. A green laser beam dancing on his upper chest. 

I had the shotgun pointed at his crotch. 

"So, what's it gonna be? Gendo?" 

Gendo dropped the revolver. 

I stuck my head out to see Asuka breathing very deeply. Her pistol still aimed right at Gendo's noggin. She was very clearly thinking about it. 

"Mind if I come out?" I asked. 

She assented. 

I walked past Gendo, kicked the revolver away from him and said to Asuka. "Okay, perhaps we should consider all the angles here before we..." 

"There is nothing you can say that will deny me this." 

I replied, "okay, we could do that, or we could do this. Angle number one, you are a German military officer, on US soil. You are probably going to be put on trial for shooting him. And I have no idea how that trial would go. That said, the bastard did kill your mother and... Well, perhaps we could bash his brains out and tell everyone that he slipped in the bathroom?" 

"What do you want? Do you want him alive?" Asuka asked. 

I leaned in, I made damn sure that the rest of the world didn't hear what I was about to say as I whispered. 

"Gendo is a bad guy, I get it. Believe me. But right now I don't care about him. I care about you. Killing a man is not something that can be taken back. And... Okay, I really don't know what direction this will push you. But your mother, she... She's asked me a bunch of times, 'can I trust you?' The only thing it has ever felt like she has said to me is. Can I trust you? You know what she never adds to that question that she should? Can I trust you... to take care of my daughter?"

Asuka gasped, the pistol began to tremble in her hands as demeanor went from barely bridled rage to sadness. 

"You're holding all the cards. What's it going to be?" 

"Can I just shoot him in the legs?" 

"I suppose you could. But that would still risk a few charges. And federal agents are probably going to be here any second to... Oh, hai, guiz." 

I dropped the shotgun. 

Asuka reluctantly lowered the HK. 

"Ah, now we come to the real reason why we leave our enemies alive, snappy comebacks." 

Just before he was handcuffed I reached into one of Gendo's trouser pockets and pulled out a set of convertible keys, I said. 

"As you might know, that car I left you with was a rental. I really should get it back." 

As the agents quietly hauled him off they also took the weapons we had dropped. I stretched, smiled at Asuka, went back in the suite and saw that I had one slice of pie left. I handed it to Asuka with a clean fork and went back to typing. 

to the acid culture alone? No, no how could it? That's the foundation for most organized religion. That someone or at least some force is tending to that... eternal light.

So now, here we are. All these decades later. Picking through wreckage of the aged and fermented fevered dreams of dead men. Dreams that still compel us. Establishments to be overthrown. The CIA, DIA and the rest of the US government will have to provide a complete accounting and admission to what happened here. This transcript and the reams of data files I have broadcast will make damn sure of that. The CIA permitted Seele to get as big as it did. That's just a fact and I hope I have made damn sure that we will not be trading Seele for the CIA. We in the military... Still sounds odd to say that. Have learned the hard way, over decades, that the CIA does not always act in the best national interest.

That said, it is my opinion Director Jedburgh did something that probably needed to be done. Which will almost certainly see him jailed and/or executed. Perhaps he should have clanked the bars himself. Knowing him though he has probably already chosen the circumstances of his death. And it will probably be something far less painful than dying of radiation poisoning. Or in a hail of gunfire. Or in an electric chair.

When I set out on this trip I had a clear goal and intention. I was going to use the might of a great American myth to exorcise the nightmares that Gendo Ikari was trying to force upon the world. To use a tale of uniqueness and individuality to defeat a plan which would end with all humanity fused into one over-mind. As I type this Gendo is being hauled off to Club Fed. Goal achieved. What is my intention now? I feel that I have exorcised more than just Gendo's nightmares. I feel like I have touched something deeper, lurking in the collective subconscious. Not sure exactly what that is just yet though. I can also say that I have faced myself, in a philosophical sense at least, and I like to think that I have lived up to my middle name.

Kinda sad about what happened with Rei. But having a knife waved in your face by your... Son? I guess? I really have no idea what Rei and Shinji's relationship is supposed to be. Either way, it's better than Instrumentality. At least in my book. Perhaps after several months of careful therapy she will be able to counter that argument. Or say something besides 'thirty five cents." 

We must acknowledge the crimes committed, not to deny them, or whitewash them or make them look like something better than what they were. We must acknowledge what we have done and just as important we must acknowledge what others have done. What they are willing to do and what we sometimes must do to defend ourselves. We must tend to the manifest plagues that bedevil our poor planet and species.

Who knows, once we take responsibility, at least within our own minds and in our own respective corners of this devastated planet. We can begin to clean up this mess that was left to us in 1971. And even further back than 1955. Once we see the weaponization of psychedelics and psychedelic culture we can see it for what it is as opposed to what propaganda tell us. Wars end, other wars begin. The wars are always different, yet war itself never changes.

The only constant, is change? Is it not?

I looked over at Asuka, she had just finished the pie. 

Fear and loathing. Courage and acceptance. Opposing frequencies bumping together on the giant radio set that is the universe. That is the most beatnik thing I have ever said in my life. But there it is. Clashing frequencies. In the end that's all that most of this is. Albeit manifesting, in these cases to be frequencies of... Disturbing symmetry. Maybe the waves will cancel each other out. And maybe, just maybe. Some healing is done as a single measurable result emerges out of the storm of mathematical probabilities that define our lives.

Illustrious.

I pulled the last page from the typewriter and used the fancy pen that belonged to the guy at the car rental place to add a handwritten note on the back of the last page. 

"Shinji, I will see you soon. It seems that I'm going to have to go on a little road trip with Asuka. You bought the ticket, you took the ride. You faced instrumentality and you shoved it down Acosta's throat. You faced your father and shoved Acosta down his throat. I don't think I was born to meet you but I can say... No homo, none whatsoever, Wingman." 

We checked out of the hotel. Made sure that all bills had been paid, mailed copies of my first draft to several places and returned both the convertible and the pen that I had... borrowed without asking, to the car rental firm. As I dropped off the keys and the pen the guy behind the counter said. "Hang on, we have one last thing for you. Courtesy of Director Jedburgh." 

It was a box, with three glasses cases in it. One contained a very lightweight, extremely strong, bullet resistant set of red goggles. With a camera built into the bridge. 

The second case contained a set of sunglasses with yellow lenses and a circle in the middle of the bridge. Identical to ones worn by both Hunter Thompson and Johnny Depp. They were in my prescription. 

As I walked out to the SUV I saw Asuka leaning out of the door of the passengers side, I handed her the third pair. A set of sunglasses with pink oval lenses. 

I got in the drivers seat and said, "there, now everyone's clothes are pink. At least to your eyes." 

I thought of giving her a little kiss on the cheek like I had given to Shinji. Then I remembered, captive audience. And my new goggles came with a note in Jedburgh's handwriting. 

"Don't overdo it. Ball's in your court now, Illustrious." 

As we left Vegas there was time for one last song. I didn't want to play Jumping Jack Flash for a variety of reasons. I suppose I could have played some Eric Clapton. But that didn't feel quite right either. If I had felt sadistic, or perhaps just stupid. I could have started belting out Komm Süsser Tod. I hadn't let anyone down on this mission and I didn't want sweet death to come. Then I remembered the silly little, crudely animated story floating around in a sea of consciousness that had inspired this one. And how the song that story probably would have ended with. Then I thought again, the music of Linkin Park had always been bad luck for me. No there was something more fundamental here. An end which was a long time coming and I really felt like being nice. As I cued what I felt was the best song for the circumstances I asked. 

"Asuka?" 

"Yeah?" 

"You don't have to sing along to this if you don't want to. Though it is encouraged. And I'm going to sing along with it."

🎶Blinded by the lights!"🎶

🎶 "I've been trying to call, I've been on my own for long enough. Maybe you can show me how to love... Maybe?"🎶

🎶Sin city's cold and empty, no one around to judge me. I can't see clearly when you're gone. When I'm like this you're the one I trust!🎶 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Complete soundtrack. 
> 
> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aRX1Bqf1iJ8
> 
> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x8G4xrYfWmw
> 
> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k-HdGnzYdFQ
> 
> https://youtu.be/a-C9pUGszsw
> 
> https://youtu.be/szi1iIkhV2E
> 
> https://youtu.be/pnJM_jC7j_4
> 
> https://youtu.be/olEM3hsj-FU
> 
> https://youtu.be/ZZ_hWTuSYSk
> 
> https://youtu.be/pM9e8nNXYVI
> 
> https://youtu.be/GD2_bkNgX5I
> 
> https://youtu.be/m-UTgq0LZvA
> 
> https://youtu.be/5UVeUolZiO8
> 
> https://youtu.be/Jt1ev3CK3oo
> 
> https://youtu.be/sR_QnaUsjD8


End file.
